


The Nine Terrifying Moons

by A_nonnie_mouse



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Established Relationship, Eventual Smut, F/M, Family Drama, Fluff, Fluff and Mush, Growing Up Together, I Blame Tumblr, Mortal World Shenanigans, Post-Book 3: The Queen of Nothing, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:29:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26504431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_nonnie_mouse/pseuds/A_nonnie_mouse
Summary: Really, what are we doing here? Of all the people in all the realms, I think we are the last two people who ought to be becoming parents.Jude's not sure what she thought becoming a mother would be like, but it's not this.
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 139
Kudos: 323
Collections: favorite on TFOTA





	1. The First

I am trying to keep my hands from shaking while I’m holding the test strip. There’s one pink line, and I’m waiting to see if there will be two. I think I already know the answer, but I’m holding my breath like it’ll make time go faster anyway.

If I ever imagined this moment, which I don’t remember ever doing, but if I did, I would have imagined it like the commercials that would run in the background when my mom would watch tv while she cooked dinner. If those were to be believed, I was supposed to be in an all-white, pristine, upper-middle-class bathroom, gasping with tears of joy while I hid my pearly white smile behind trembling fingers. My partner would be hugging me from behind, elated and definitely not about to make any crude jokes about the virulence of his sperm.

None of this is happening.

I am in a Target bathroom stall, surrounded by Target-red walls. Cardan, my husband and the High King of Elfhame, is on the other side of the red walls, trying to distract himself with the automatic paper towel dispensers. He’s waving his hand in front of it every couple of seconds; I can hear it each time the motor dispenses paper. I wonder how long of a trail he’s created at this point, but it’s the least of my worries.

“Cardan, you’re wasting paper,” I tell him anyway. He does it again once more; I can practically feel his petulant glare through the wall.

“How long is this meant to take?” he asks.

“It’s only been thirty seconds,” I tell him. “It takes two minutes.”

“I will die of old age by then,” Cardan mutters to himself, which I know he finds funny, because he’s immortal, and he waves his hand by the paper towel dispenser again.

I think I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.

Cardan had not been keen on this particular trip to Target, which is saying a lot, because he’s usually so fond of it. He had wanted to cut our trip to the mortal world short, head back to Elfhame and its royal healers and midwives and have me submit to their inquiries and tests, as all queens and lovers of the High Kings of Elfhame have before me.

But I just needed a minute to _think._ I needed to process this, with Cardan alone, and face the impossibly difficult questions we’ve been avoiding since this became a question. And if this is true, if I really am with child, with _Cardan’s child_ , I don’t want the first people to know to be a bunch of faerie midwives. I want to tell Vivi and Heather. I want Taryn to know first. And I am filled with loathing when I think about how protected and insulated I’m about to become when the healers and midwives know. How the people will cease to see me as their High Queen and rather as the incubator for their Prince.

I want to eat an entire pint of Ben and Jerry’s. This is all happening so fast.

I glance back at the test strip. Stand and flush the toilet. Step out of the red walls.

Cardan’s raised his dark eyebrows, his hand arrested halfway to the paper towel dispenser again.

“Well?” He looks guarded, unsure of how he’s supposed to be reacting. I hand him the test and step up to the sink, turning on the water to wash my hands. I can see him in the mirror behind me, in his tight pants and boots, The Ramones T-shirt he’s borrowed from Vivi. He’s turning the test over and over in his hands, like he can’t tell which way is up. _Same_ , honestly. My head feels like it’s detached from my body.

“It’s yes,” is the only dumb thing I manage to mutter as I soap up my fingers. _Just like the commercials._

“How can you tell?” Cardan’s only looking more confused.

“The two lines.” I turn off the water and tear off part of Cardan’s paper towel train. “The two pink lines mean yes.”

Cardan looks up at me. His chest is hitching in shallow breaths.

“We should be celebrating,” he says, but it comes out like he’s trying to convince himself. So he tries again, squaring up his shoulders with a bit more enthusiasm. “We should be celebrating.”

“Mhmm,” I try to agree with a tight nod. I think I’m going to be sick. Again. Cardan searches my face, his gold-rimmed eyes flitting over the lip I’m worrying away at.

“You do not appear to be particularly celebratory,” he points out, but, then, neither does he. His cheekbones are tingeing red.

“It happened so fast, don’t you think?” My voice sounds almost breathless. It feels like a relief to point out, and that relief is contagious. Cardan’s shoulders sag a little bit as he lets out a breath.

“ _Lightning_ fast,” he agrees. He’s white-knuckling the pregnancy test.

“Careful -- I peed on that,” I point out, and, as if I’ve instead told him it’s on fire, Cardan hurls it into the trash with a disgusted huff.

I think for a moment about fishing it back out again, the only bit of evidence that I have that what’s going on inside of me is real. That the legacy we wished first wished for together in the dark, in each other’s arms, not even a month ago, is happening _now_ and _fast_ and _there’s no going back._ The time for second-guessing was over.

But a disconcerting combination of nausea and hunger hit me in the gut all at once, and I’m reminded that I have plenty of evidence and I’m only going to get more. If I really want to, I’ll just pee on another stick later.

“I need Starbucks,” I spout at the same moment Cardan sighs, “I need a drink.” And we share a quick smile.

At there’s still this. This has not changed.

And I should be enjoying that as we leave the bathroom and Cardan lifts the glamour he’d left at the door to give us some privacy. The “Out of Order” sign vanishes. But instead, I’m thinking of everything that is going to change. Of everything that _ought_ to change, immediately, if at all possible.

I find myself unconsciously reaching for Cardan’s hand, and when I grab his palm and entwine our fingers, he’s squeezing mine back, hard. He knows. The worries and arguments past are resurfacing in his mind, too, and, for a moment, he wordlessly anchors himself to me.

We’re walking past customer service, following the alluring scent trail of coffee and baked goods, as I began to look at the other moms shopping. Their cute messy buns and their athleisure, pushing expensive strollers while their kids gnaw on the season’s latest teethers. And I’m struck, once again, by how much I don’t know.

Really, what are we doing here? Of all the people in all the realms, I think we are the last two people who ought to be becoming parents.

For one, I am an unrepentant murderer. Raised by an unrepentant murderer. Who murdered my own mother in front of me. This is not a person who ought to be cradling newborns.

And Cardan? The twice-cursed High King of Elfhame? Raised by house cats, beaten nightly by his own brother. Simultaneously spoiled and neglected. Is such a person even capable of cradling newborns?

And we’re about to be _parents_. I need to be reading more, I think. I need to have a plan. We never made a plan. _We hadn’t had time to make a plan._

I pause a moment near the checkout lines, pulling Cardan to a stop beside me.

“I’m going to buy a few things first,” I decide in that moment. “Vitamins. Maybe some parenting books.”

“I don’t see the point,” Cardan retorts, straight-faced. “We have plenty of house cats.”

I narrow my eyes up at him as he smirks.

“That joke will be hilarious in a few weeks,” he tells me. “Just you wait.”

“I really doubt it,” I frown, and he’s still smirking when he drops my hand, stepping in front of me.

“My darling Jude,” he cups my face in his hands, and for a moment, his face is all I’m seeing. His expression is soft and tender across his beautiful features, and if our child is even half as good as looking, I am going to struggle to not let it have its way in all things. Or I’m going to want to strangle it. Some days, it’s a coin toss.

“You are the most fearsome and glorious creature I have ever had the privilege to behold,” Cardan is telling me. I’m struck once again by the marvel that he can’t lie and what he is saying must be true. In our five years of marriage, it is still sometimes hard to believe.

“And you will be the most fearsome and glorious mother,” he goes on. “I could not conjure up a more perfect mother for my offspring if I tried.”

“I think that says more about your lack of imagination than anything else,” I quip, but my cheeks are smiling in his hands regardless. He smirks back and quickly kisses me on the lips, once, twice.

“I am _happy_ at this news,” he reassures me, as if he has sensed this whole time how overcome I am.

“I am, too,” I say, and I mean it. Truly. I’m a mixing bowl of emotions. My gaze drifts toward the store. “But we do need parenting books…”

Cardan kisses me quick one last time before releasing my face.

“I will procure your coffee,” he says, taking a step back, and it’s impossible not to look him over, his long, lean body in tight, black pants and worn t-shirt, his messy, black curls around the points of his ears. I have modern science to thank for keeping my womb empty these last five years. Chastity certainly had nothing to do with it.

“And Cardan?” I call after him. He turns. “A cake pop, too?” I ask, already in the clutches of a craving.

He looks intrigued.

“Is that what it sounds like?” he asks.

“Ball of cake on a stick,” I explain, kind of gesturing with my hands as if it will help. Cardan nods, determined.

“Then we will be needing several,” he declares before heading off toward the smell of coffee.

I shoulder the bag I borrowed from Heather and then stuff my hands into the pockets of the yellow sundress I’m wearing, one of a few mortal things of my own I keep at Vivi and Heather’s for visits. I’m on my way to the books section when I start to slow down near a display of newborn onesies.

It isn’t as though I never wanted to be a mother. I supposed there would come a day when I would have acquired all the knowledge one needed to be a mother, and then I would, I don’t know, award myself a medal or a pin and be declared Ready.

Taryn hadn’t been Ready. She would be the first to admit that. Not that I don’t love my niece with my entire heart. But Taryn’s daughter was a _handful_. Little Eva had been colicky and prone to getting her days and nights confused. For that entire first year, every time we saw Taryn, it seemed she faded a little more: the bags under her eyes greying, her auburn hair growing longer and frayed, everything but her breasts shrinking in size. Of course, it wasn’t permanent. Eva learned to sleep eventually, and to walk and eat and use a toilet, and, now that she was a robust and energetic five-year-old, Taryn was more like herself than she’d been in years.

Still. _That first year, though._

Time and time again, Cardan and I would exchange glances while Eva squealed and squalled. It was always a silent _No, thank you, please_ passing between us. _We’re just fine without, thank you._ Between the battle for the crown and undoing a curse, we’d had quite enough excitement, and so I eagerly welcomed Vivi regularly smuggling me little moon-shaped packets of pink pills from the mortal world. I took them each morning, like clockwork, with relish – it meant I could enjoy my freedom, _our_ freedom as long as I wanted.

I’m not sure what happened in me. One day, I was calling it freedom. The next, it felt like an empty vessel.

We’d gone to visit Taryn and Eva at their estate for a summer solstice brunch. Vivi and Heather had come, and The Ghost was there, too, swapping stories and laughing with Vivi. I’d stepped out onto the terrace to call in Eva for food when I’d spotted Cardan. He was helping Eva climb up a tree, holding her hand while she balanced on a branch. Her wild fox hair was blowing in the late morning breeze that carried her giggle up to the house. Then she leapt at him with a delighted squeal, and he caught her and spun her around so that she squealed some more. And that look of sheer joy on his face when she did. His unguarded laugh echoed up through the grassy hills. I felt my heart crack open.

 _No, thank you, please_ suddenly felt very unadvised.

“What have I done to deserve such a face?” Cardan asked me, leaving a lingering kiss close to my ear. I guess I was looking a little amorous when he and Eva came inside. Little Eva was trotting off to the kitchens as I wound my fingers against the buttons of Cardan’s doublet, keeping him close for a moment longer.

“You looked happy,” I said as his hands slid around my waist. I looked up into his dark eyes, warm only for me, and saw he was smiling. “You looked like you liked doing fatherly things.”

He pulled me a little closer, a little tighter.

“I think I did,” he admitted, perhaps hardly believing it himself.

And then it happened. The unspoken shift, the change in the air. It seemed to crackle in the space between our gaze, and it took a fair bit of restraint to not pull him into the nearest coat closet and tear off his clothes. Taryn was calling us anyway. The servants had set the table, and no one would be seated until we had taken our chairs, even in this little family arrangement. Taryn was set on Eva learning courtly manners by example.

 _Courtly manners. By example._ Taryn had the best intentions for Eva, but the phrases make me snort even now while I peruse baby clothes in Target. What example did we set in Faerie? One of murder and deceit and betrayal and _lewd behavior_.

The same day that I’d watched Cardan play with Eva, he abruptly ended dinner in the palace’s great hall to hoist me into his arms and carry me out, away from every one’s gaze, away from even the guards.

“What has gotten into you _?_ ” I kicked my feet and pounded at his shoulders – not particularly hard. Look, I’m not going to pretend this isn’t a game now. I could cause damage if I wanted to. I don’t.

Cardan set me on my feet, only to seize my waist in one arm. We stumbled into an alcove in the wall as his head dipped to my neck, his other hand catching us against the wall. Delighted shivers danced down my arms as his lips brushed the spot below my ear, and I couldn’t hold back a gasp.

“You couldn’t lie to me now even if you wanted to, wife,” Cardan murmured, kissing my ear. He wasn’t wrong. I ran my hands up his deep blue velvet doublet to his shoulders, and bent into his embrace. His hands began to roam my waist, my hips, pulling at my skirts.

“I’ll tell you whatever you like if you’ll keep doing this,” I whispered back, flushing. When he pulled back from my throat, there was a wicked, sneaking smile on his reddening lips.

“You don’t despise the thought of bearing my children,” he said, like it’s a revelation. I blinked. Had he been thinking about our previous exchange all day?

“I despise the thought of bearing _any_ children,” I clarified. “It’s not some honor unique to you.”

Cardan gasped as if he was wounded.

“You could not have cut me deeper,” he teased, as I wound my fingers into the soft hair at the nape of his neck. “I thought I was special.”

“You _are_ ,” I said, tugging at his hair. “Because if I’m to bear any children at all, I would like them to be yours.” 

The smile that spread over his face then was far from wicked. Cardan was flushed and delighted in a way few got to see, and his arms squeezed around me, lifting me to him as he crushed his lips to mine.

“ _Cardan,”_ I laughed against his fevered kisses, my cheeks hurting. “I didn’t mean _right this second._ ”

His lips were swollen when he pulled back, the pupils of his gold-rimmed eyes blown wide.

“Then practice with me,” he said, his breathing ragged. “Like swordplay. You’re always saying I’m rubbish at practicing.”

“You really are,” I gasped against his mouth.

In the last five years, I’ve grown no better at resisting the pull of his desire. If anything, I’m only worse. I couldn’t think straight there in his arms. I wanted to drown in his contagious idealism. I wanted to be set aflame by his soft lips and his body against mine.

With my arms thrown over his shoulders, his lips slid against mine, over and over, our hearts pounding in time together. And then he lifted me off my toes so that he could push us both through our bedchamber door.

A shoe slipped from my foot, and he stumbled over it, kicked it to the side, without releasing my waist. Only when the back of my legs pressed against the bedframe did he pull back from my mouth, breathless. And then he pushed me back onto the bed.

I stretched out on the lush duvet, my whole body thrumming as my heart battered my ribcage. But when I looked up at his face there at the foot of the bed, his expression had darkened in the candlelight.

“What is it?” I pushed myself up to my elbows. “Why are you stopping?”

Cardan suddenly looked as if he was at war with himself. Even though his chest still heaved, he inched to the bed and stepped back again, his dark brows furrowing together.

“Cardan…?” I sat up, alarmed at his hesitation.

“Do you think I would be any good at it?” he blurted out. “At being a father,” he clarified, and winced as if he already knew and hated the answer.

I slid to the edge of the bed and reached for his belt. Pulled him closer.

“You are as equipped for the task as I am,” I said, looking up at him with what I hoped was a provocative smile. He slid his long fingers into my hair, and I _needed_ him closer. “If you’re terrible at it, then I will probably be worse.”

I meant it in jest. He’d always liked this side of me before, my dark, warped cruelty. But this time, his fingers tightened suddenly in my hair.

“ _Shit_.” The word slid out of him like it was being dragged. His hands dropped from my hair, and he stepped back to look at me. He drew in a sharp breath.

“You think I would be a terrible father,” he said, which was hardly fair. That wasn’t what I said at all. I sighed hard, ruing the direction this was going – further from the bed.

“I think neither one of us knows what a good father looks like,” I said. Cardan only gave a painful chuckle.

“We are both quite familiar with terrible fathers,” he said. “I think you, of anyone, would be able to recognize a terrible father when you saw one.”

“And that is the last time you will compare yourself to Madoc,” I said, in horror. “If _that_ is the standard for terrible fathers, then you’re angelic.”

But Cardan gave me a look of slit-eyed skepticism, so I stood from the bed and stepped to him.

“And, really, what does it matter right now?” I asked, lowly, holding a hand to his face. He leaned against it. I was almost ready to start begging. “I am not falling pregnant tonight. We have time to learn these things, if we want to learn them at all.” I lifted onto my tip toes, brushing my lips to the hollow of his cheek.

“Just come to bed,” I whispered there, and I saw his eyes fall shut, his dark lashes against his sharp cheekbones, as he turned to meet the slant of my lips.

“I want to be good at it,” he murmured against my mouth, as I dragged him toward the bed.

“Then you will be,” I insisted just before he cradled the back of my neck, sinking into our kiss as we tipped toward the mattress.

 _We have time._ It’s an easy lie to tell when you’re in Faerie. Time stretches on, limitless and unending. There _should_ be time, endless amounts of time, to learn all you need to know – about anything. There _should_ be time to become the person you’d always wanted to be.

I had had two months since that first conversation. Even less time since the others. In Faerie, that’s hardly a lunch hour.

I am reeling. I’m in Target with a red basket full of prenatal vitamins and snacks and pregnancy books, and I am absolutely reeling.

After I check out, I find Cardan sitting on the curb with a Starbucks bag that’s the size of a large gift bag and two venti Frappuccinos. The one he’s nursing is strawberry-pink and looks full of cream.

“They didn’t have wine,” he tells me, handing me mine. It’s drizzled in caramel, and I’m not sure it’s what I would have ordinarily chosen, but right now, it smells perfect.

“Probably for the best,” I say, and hazard a glance at his expression. It’s dark and troubled again as he squints against the sunlight. His legs are drawn up, and he’s resting his elbows on his knees, like he’s hunched under a weight. Reality’s given him a hard jolt since he kissed me in front of the newborn onesies.

I take a long sip of the Frappuccino through the green straw.

“Cardan, if you don’t want to do this--” I start, and his head jerks up.

“I have _always_ wanted this,” he snaps, looking defensive, and then he’s looking at his boots again.

“Okay.” I sit back, extending my legs.

How do I do this? I have no blueprint for this. Floundering, there’s only one rope I know to pull, the one that’s always saved us: honesty.

So, I go on.

“I’m terrified, too,” I say. I spread the yellow fabric of my sundress over my knees. “If that’s any consolation. I think I’ll be happy eventually, but right now, I’m completely freaking out. I can hardly form a coherent thought. How many cake pops did you get?” I cock my head at the large Starbucks bag.

Cardan shifts it in my direction.

“All of them,” he says, glumly.

I raise my eyebrows as I peer in the bag. Oak will be excited, at least.

“I hate myself for being so terrified of a thing I desperately want.” I look up at Cardan’s confession to see his face twisted in loathing, and my heart twists right along with it. I know this pain, the agony of fearing what you love.

I could lie to him; I probably should. I should tell him right now that I know without a shadow of a doubt he will be a perfect father, that he’s beyond everything that had been done to him, that none of it had ever touched me either. But I don’t lie to him anymore.

Instead, I hand him a cake pop.

“That strikes me as a waste of energy,” I say, and nudge him with a coy smile. “There are so many other things you could hate yourself for.”

He gives me a wicked smirk and, instead of taking the cake pop I’ve offered, he seizes my other wrist and takes a large bite out of the one I’d claimed for myself. Feigning exasperation, I stab at him with the leftover stick.

“Does this not strike you as problematic?” he asks a moment later, his cheek still full of cake.

“Yes.” I reply with a stoic nod. “The fact that you just ate a pregnant lady’s cake pop is both striking _and_ problematic.”

“I mean this repartee you and I enjoy.” He wipes at a bit of icing at the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “A child ought to know his father loves his mother and vice versa, should he not? I would think that sort of thing helps.”

I feel the heartbreak behind his words as if it were my own. In his mind, he’s now on an endless search for every moment in his childhood that went wrong, every little action he ought to do the opposite of. I know. My mind’s been doing it, too.

I scoot a little closer, nearing his warmth, so that I can lean against him. He rests his head on top of mine.

“But you’re my nemesis,” I say, softly.

“ _Jude_ ,” he says it like he’s scolding. “Not in front of the children.”

“Do _not_ say ‘children’.” I jab him again as he presses his lips to the top of my head. “Your wishes are too powerful, and there is room in here for only one.”

Cardan’s slipped an arm around me, and I tilt my head back to look at him. The corner of his mouth is tugging upwards, slyly.

“Tell me I’m too powerful again,” he murmurs as he kisses my cheek.

“ _Later,_ ” I promise, and I reach for another cake pop.

_There will be time for all that later._

It’s a lie I get used to telling.


	2. The Second

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I bite at the inside of my lip, gnawing in my frustration. I resent how easy it is for him to imagine being foolish and happy again. Of course it’s easy for him. Nothing strange is happening to his body every day. He’s not retching into flower pots when powerful smells waft past him, and he’s not thinking about peeing again right now, even though it’s only been forty minutes since the last visit to the toilet._

“I am beginning to question if anything good comes of reading that book,” Cardan says, warily.

I lower the spine of _What To Expect When You’re Expecting_ to glare at him over the pages. He’s on the other end of a low couch in front of the expansive hearth of Elfhame palace’s royal bedchambers, sharing the sheep’s wool coverlet I’m half-curled under in a loose, comfortable nightgown. I think maybe he just wants attention. When he prods at me with his sneaking toes beneath the blanket, I’m sure of it.

“And I suppose you have a better plan for acquainting ourselves with what is normal during mortal pregnancy,” I deadpan. It’s been a long day. I’ve vomited thrice. Frankly, I’m not sure why I’m even talking to him. I don’t want to look at anyone, let alone to be looked at.

“I have considered spiriting away one of your mortal obstetricians,” Cardan replies, and when I look aghast, he adds, with a roll of his eyes, “ _Temporarily.”_

“Reading is less work,” I tell him, picking up the book again. I’m far too exhausted to consider anything more than lying like a slug on this couch in front of our crackling fire. Everything about being pregnant is exhausting thus far. My boobs feel swollen and tender and awful. I’m spending my days thinking of decent excuses to slip out of meetings and meals so I can vomit if I need it. My head pounds if I’m even the slightest bit hungry. Every day feels like a long struggle to just be able to make it back to bed again. So far, though I don’t want to say it out loud, this just feels like a giant mistake.

Needless to say, I’m highly irritable. Constantly.

But Cardan straightens himself on the sofa a little, stretching out so he can stick one of his long fingers in the book. He pries it away from me again.

“Jude,” he looks serious, “you know how I love a good book. But this book, my darling adversary, this is not a good book.”

“You’ve read _none_ of it,” I say with an accusatory glare.

“And I may never need to,” Cardan exclaims. “Your panicked summations are enough to put me off of it entirely. Every time you pick up this book, our evenings end in dread.”

“That’s not true,” I object, although it may be. I live in a pregnancy-hormone fog these days. I can’t even recall what I ate for breakfast.

“It _is_ ,” Cardan insists. “From the moment you cracked its spine, this book has been terrorizing us. Go on, deny it,” he adds as I start to open my mouth to protest. “Do you really not recall the first delightful taste of childbearing this book gave us, that very first day a month ago?” He slits his eyes at me, daring me to lie.

I do recall. I still live with the knot in my stomach it gave me.

I’d made the mistake of flipping through the book on our walk back to Vivi and Heather’s apartment from our fateful trip to Target. I was anxious to know what exactly I’d gotten myself into, so, with a bag slung in the crook of my elbow, I sipped at the enormous caramel Frappuccino while I took my first glances at this pregnancy bible, the hot summer sun beating down on my shoulders. It didn’t take more than a few pages to land on a startling statistic.

“This says twenty percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage.” I couldn’t help reading it out loud.

“Twenty?” Cardan echoed beside me. His dark gaze was fixed on the sidewalk in front of us when I glanced at him. It grew darker while he brewed on the number. “That is more than I would have expected.”

“Most end in the first few months.” I was like a machine now. I couldn’t not spit back the facts I was consuming. I glanced at him again to see how it landed. Was it a relief to know that this is perhaps another form of practice?

“Oh,” was all he said. His dark brows pulled together tighter. I wished, not for the first time, that I could get a glimpse of what was happening beneath his mop of black curls.

Because what was happening in my head, what is still happening, is nothing but unending _fear_. From the first moment the second pink line appeared, I had slowly begun to form a picture of a future that I might like. While I fretted and perused the newborn onesies in Target, there, in the back of my mind, was what could lie ahead for us. A warm, sweet-smelling bundle with feather-soft black hair. The curl of a little finger around mine. A tiny, gummy first smile when her father peeked out at her from behind a baby blanket with his teasing, quicksilver smirk.

I was reeling, but that was an image I could tether myself to. That I could love, whole-heartedly.

But then, as I read that statistic, my stomach seized itself and dropped like a stone. I berated myself. What was I thinking, letting myself hope? I should have known better by now than to think death could not follow me here.

“Maybe we ought to wait to tell everyone,” I’d said, snapping the book shut. Cardan’s concern intensified.

“Do you think that’s wise?” he asked. I honestly didn’t know.

“It’s not as if Taryn rushed out to tell me her news,” I deflected. At that, Cardan barked an uneasy laugh.

“I sincerely hope you’re not planning to follow Taryn’s lead on this matter,” he said, with a tense smile. _Oh, good._ Another reminder of our intensely dysfunctional families. When Taryn had found herself where I was now, she’d gone and murdered her husband.

But, by the time we arrived back at Vivi and Heather’s, we were agreed. We didn’t need the emotional turmoil of telling everyone only to untell them. The two pink lines would stay our secret for now. And then I gulped Frappuccino until my brain froze.

“Maybe sometimes fear and wisdom look very similar,” I tell Cardan now, curled beneath the sheep’s skin blanket.

“Then I want neither.” Cardan looks he’s beginning to fray under the pressure of the secret. He props an elbow on the back of the low sofa, resting his head in his hand as he stuffs his fingers into his messy hair. “Let’s be rid of this book, Jude. Let’s be foolish and happy again until we’re told to be otherwise.”

I bite at the inside of my lip, gnawing in my frustration. I resent how easy it is for him to imagine being foolish and happy again. Of course it’s easy for him. Nothing strange is happening to his body every day. He’s not retching into flower pots when powerful smells waft past him, and he’s not thinking about peeing again right now, even though it’s only been forty minutes since the last visit to the toilet.

I try to swallow down my resentment. _This isn’t his fault any more than it is mine._

“This book helps me know what’s happening is normal,” I tell him. “And I need that right now.”

“ _Or_ ,” Cardan offers, and there’s a condescending nip to his voice that kind of makes me want to throat-punch him, “you could speak with Taryn. Or the royal midwife. Jude, please, it’s been weeks--”

“It’s still too early,” I interrupt. My face is starting to flush, hot and irritated, or maybe it’s just the hormones. I don’t know anymore.

“Too early?” Cardan echoes, with a nervous hitch in his voice. “Is there a particular level of pregnant you’re trying to achieve? Were you less pregnant a month ago?”

“Now you’re just being annoying,” I frown at him. “Let me read in peace.”

Cardan makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat and turns his head to glare at the curling flames in the hearth. What I don’t tell him, what I can hardly admit to myself, is that I feel this _compulsion_ to read this book, like it is what will save me from looking like an unprepared idiot in front of my sister and any individual who considers me their High Queen. It’s vanity and ego and insecurity, and I _know_ it is, but if I speak it, if I say it out loud even to Cardan, then it will have to be dealt with, and my capacity for dealing with things has diminished severely as of late. I barely have the capacity to deal with the oakwood scent of Cardan so close to me, which has never been unpleasant, but lately seems almost too strong. Why does being pregnant mean I must smell _everything_?

I hate it. I don’t want to admit that, either. If I have to talk to someone about this, I’m not sure how I’m going to pretend that this is some wonderful miracle. At present, it’s nothing of the sort. I just feel exhausted and ill.

“It doesn’t seem real.” Cardan, as usual, doesn’t take a hint and is not ready to stop talking. The orange glow of the fire flickers across his face, casting dark shadows along his cheekbones, his collarbone beneath his loosened shirt. “I think it would seem real to me if we could tell someone.”

I lower the book again, that resentment simmering again.

“Would you like me to aim for your shoes the next time I vomit?” I ask, forcing a sweet smile. “Would that make everything a little more real for you?”

Cardan just rolls his eyes away from me with an impatient sigh, and I think, not for the first time, how lucky he is to be as attractive as he is to me, otherwise I would be skewering him to a wall. But all that rage comes to a halt at his next words.

“Jude, did you lie to me?” When he turns his gaze to me again, I see the reflection of the fire glistening in his black eyes. And they look hurt. “When you said you wanted this with me.”

“No.” I push myself up on the couch, sitting up and facing him. “Cardan, I would not lie to you about something so serious.”

“But you would lie to me.” There’s something more than fire flickering in his eyes now. My heart twisting now, I pull a hand out from beneath the wool coverlet to grab at his jeweled fingers, pulling his hand to me.

“The only thing I can think of that I might possibly ever lie to you about is whether or not a joke you’ve told in public was funny,” I confess, and at that, Cardan looks mortified.

“But you are the _only person_ I trust to tell me if I’ve said something foolish in public,” he exclaims.

“Sometimes it’s more expedient to just humor you,” and I give a sheepish shrug when his brow furrows deep enough it might leave behind worry lines. Maybe I took the honesty a little too far. “In any case,” I wrap my other hand around his, ignoring his now-wary glare, “I would not lie to you about anything that truly mattered, and the fact that I’m being so painfully honest in this moment is meant to be a testament to that. I would never lie to you about wanting a child with you. That would be _insane._ ”

Cardan drops his gaze to our hands as he absentmindedly traces my knuckle with the pad of his thumb.

“But you have been miserable for weeks,” he says, quietly.

“I have been _sick,_ and, yes, that is miserable,” I reply. “I didn’t expect to be sick all the time.”

“It could be this book that’s making you sick,” Cardan mutters. With his spare hand, he tries to inch the book away from me again. “I know it makes me a little ill,” he adds.

“I know, I shouldn’t have skipped ahead,” I say, quietly apologetic. We’re each thinking of what we’d seen that first day, as I flipped through its pages before we fell asleep on Heather and Vivi’s pullout couch. The diagrams we’d seen of the insides of pregnant bellies, with their squished organs and misshapen pelvic regions. And that final exit strategy – _good gods_. I’d snapped the book shut the moment my eyes fell on the words “ring of fire” and then barely slept that whole night.

Once, I’d stabbed myself in the hand to prove my loyalty to Prince Dain. How tiny and insignificant that wound now seemed compared to what my loyalty to Cardan was going to do to my vagina.

I should not be thinking these things. Maybe Cardan’s right – maybe I am making myself sick with this book.

So I let him pull it away from my fingers. And hold his hand a little tighter.

“I don’t know how to stop myself from feeling so stricken and under-prepared,” I confess. “I’m High Queen. I need to at least look like I know what I’m doing. Imagine if I didn’t read this book, and, in a few months, I show up to a Living Council with stains all over my gown from my leaking nipples.”

Cardan blinks like I’ve slapped him.

“Leaking _what?”_ he chokes.

“Oh, you heard me right. They’re going to leak. And my skin could erupt in pimples, and I could sprout hairs on my chin and red marks all over my stomach. Oh, yes, enjoy all this now, Cardan. In a few months, you’ll be married to a rotund little troll with leaky tits.”

Cardan’s eyes are twinkling like he’s holding back a laugh.

“I have never bedded a troll before,” he says, raising an intrigued eyebrow. “You shall be my first.”

“And here I thought the fae couldn’t lie,” I tease, poking him with my toes.

“If you’re trying to mock me, I can’t hear it.” Cardan gives me a lazy, pleased smile as he leans into his jeweled fist, an elbow propped up against the back of the sofa. “I’m far too enchanted fantasizing about the promise of my first troll.”

I don’t want to smile at him when it feels like he’s teasing me, but I kind of can’t help it. I try to turn it into a scowl, and he just grins wider at me. God, he’s even cute when he’s annoying.

“I think, enchanting goddess of mine,” Cardan continues, seemingly oblivious to his effects on me, “if you are going to spend so many hours full of worry and study and dread, we must counteract by spending the same amount of hours on delightful things.”

And this is why I need him. This is what he has done for me, time and time again, since we began to rule together. When I have wanted to bark orders and feel in control, it is always Cardan I look to to lighten the mood, to charm and beguile.

And it’s Cardan who’s showed me, though likely by complete accident, that the best and quickest way to release myself of my fears is by sharing the burden.

“I’m hoping you have ideas,” I say. “And lots of them.” Because I am filled to the brim with worry.

Cardan’s smile gleams as he takes my hand in both of his.

“Don’t say no right away,” he says, “but I think we should tell The Roach.”

“What?” An odd choice. “No.” So I don’t take instruction well. “The Roach? First? Why?”

“Because I want to. Very badly.” I narrow my eyes at the smile on Cardan’s face I’d now like to wipe off in light of his stupid response. “And – _and­--”_ He holds up a hand before I can interrupt. “I truly don’t know what he will do. But I do know that we pay him quite handsomely for his discretion, so if anyone can be trusted with something we wish to remain a secret, it is the Roach. Who, again – truly, I don’t know what he will do. He might weep tears of joy, Jude. Think of that. I think I would like to see that.”

“No,” I’m shaking my head, feeling my face beginning to burn again. “No, no, no, no…”

“Just one.” Cardan’s starting to sound like he’s begging, which is ordinarily so lovely, but I’m closing my eyes to it now. “Just The Roach. Who we pay to keep secrets. So, it’s practically like telling no one at all. Jude, what is it?”

I’m squishing my eyes shut tighter and tighter, until there are colors swirling beneath my eyelids. I am pressing back a surge of tears I hadn’t anticipated. And now Cardan has seen.

“If it happens--” I’m starting to stammer, my voice sounding all wrong, “if we lose it – The Roach will have to know -- to know that, too, and I…”

“Jude.” I feel Cardan’s hand cup my cheek, one and then the other, over a trail left behind by a searing hot tear. His face looks soft and blurry when I open my eyes, reflections of firelight swaying in the pools in my eyes.

“Jude,” he says again, even softer, his brow furrowing together. “And the thought of this drives you to tears? _You?_ Or is this something else?”

 _Or is this something else?_ Something enormous feels like it’s about to well right up out of my lungs. _Oh, God_ , these pregnancy hormones are monstrous. I’m trying to swallow down my own mortifying reaction to his soft concern, and it’s not working. More tears are dripping out onto his hands.

“You don’t know,” I start to whisper, and the something enormous and ancient begins to tear itself free from within me. I’m about to start crying in earnest. “You don’t know what it was like,” I push on, “when I thought you were lost to the curse. And how everyone looked at me and treated me when they knew what I had lost.”

“Oh, Jude.” There’s not a trace of jest in Cardan’s hoarse whisper now. He wipes the pads of his thumbs over my tears.

“Everyone means well, but people seriously say the _stupidest_ things when you’ve lost someone,” I blubber. “They just make it worse. And _you don’t know_ what that felt like. _I_ do. And I don’t _ever_ want to feel it again.”

“I didn’t know you still thought of that,” Cardan says, quietly. He releases my face only to slide closer to me on the sofa, slipping my legs over his, until he’s close enough to lean closer to me.

“I didn’t know you didn’t,” I reply.

“There’s not much for me to recall but darkness. Sometimes I think it was worse for you. Just this moment, for example. Just this moment, it seems it was worse for you.”

I draw the edge of the wooly blanket across my eyes to dry them, trying to gather myself. But now it seems I’ve punctured a hole in a wound that needed lancing.

“The worst of it was that it made _sense,_ ” I say to the blanket, in a strained whisper. “My whole life had been punctuated with death. Valerian wished it to be my only companion. It made sense that I would not deserve to have love. As it makes sense that I would not get to keep _this_.”

“Jude.” Cardan’s hands drift over my arms as I drop the blanket from my eyes. “Jude, Jude, Jude, Jude, Jude.” I think I would hear him whisper my name like this until I die myself. “I cannot even find the words to tell you how very deeply, terribly wrong you are, and I fear you might pull a knife on me if I tried. Valerian was pathological, and a stark raving madman to boot. But I swear to you, I will spend the next nine moons convincing you that you deserve this – that _we_ deserve this – if I must.”

“’Deserve’ is a strong word,” I say, miserably. “I have no clue what I’m doing. And neither do you. And we have the literal worst examples to learn from.”

“Perhaps we don’t need them at all,” Cardan says with a flippant gesture. “Jude, you bought a book called _The Happiest Baby on the Block_. It would not have even crossed Lady Asha’s mind that a baby ought to be happy, let alone that she ought to read a whole book about how to make it so. You are already one of the better mothers I’ve ever come across.”

“I haven’t read the whole book, either,” I mutter to my hands, fussing with the sheep’s wool. My eyes are starting to water again. _Oh, my God_ , am I going to cry _again?_ “I’m stuck trying to commit the five S’s to memory, and my memory retains nothing right now.”

Cardan just looks confused now, blinking blankly a couple times. Of course, because he’s not read any of the books at all.

“It’s how the book says you can make a baby stop crying.” I give a frustrated wave of my hands. “Swaying, shushing, swaddling – something, something. Oh, _God._ ” Yep. I am going to start crying again. _Goddamnit._ I press my hands over my eyes. This is so embarrassing.

“Shouting? Singing? Swimming?” Cardan’s offering S-words while my hormones rage on.

“In what world would it be swimming?” I look up from my wet palms, incredulously.

“The Undersea,” says Cardan, without missing a beat, as if it was obvious. And I can’t help it – I snort a laugh. Cardan smirks, maybe looking a touch relieved that the tears have stopped for now.

“There’s a smile,” he says, then brightens. “Also an S-word. Is one of the words ‘smiling’?”

“Just read the book – I don’t want to spoil it for you,” I quip with a sniff.

At that, Cardan slips an arm beneath my shoulders and draws me to him. I’m exhausted and I let him, my head falling against the swell of his shoulder as he pulls me into the circle of his arms. There, I can hear the rhythm of his pulse, and for a moment, I can forget everything I’m afraid of.

Cardan draws the wool coverlet up around us as I curl into him against his chest.

“I will read your books,” he promises, surprising me. His fingertips trace lazy circles against my arm. “But let’s make a bargain.”

“You know I don’t do that,” I grumble.

“It’s a small thing, what I have in mind,” Cardan says. “I will read the books and prepare as you ask, but, in exchange, we get to spend these evenings imagining less horrifying future events. Less talk of sprouting chin hairs and more discussion of what we should like to name it.”

There’s a faint flutter in my heart at the thought, not entirely unpleasant.

“And remembering why we wanted this in the first place,” I agree, softly. If I’m going to be panicking about the future, I might as well be considering some positive outcomes as well. Cardan’s resting his head atop mine, and I feel his smile. It’s that feeling that makes me want to push a little further – to hope.

“Do you remember how tiny Eva was when she was born?” I ask him, my own smile starting to break. Cardan hums happily at the memory of our niece.

“Her tiny feet,” he comments. “I had never seen tinier feet.”

“They were so cute, I wanted to eat them up,” I grin.

“Such a bizarre yet relatable compulsion,” Cardan wonders aloud.

“What do you suppose ours will look like?” I ask him, in almost a whisper. His hand comes up to glide through my hair at my temple.

“I rather hope she has the tiniest versions of your rounded ears,” he whispers to me, as his fingers brush against the tops of mine.

Something about this sets off my heart, and I can’t take it. It’s too adorable, every bit of this moment with him and our visions of the future. I shift myself to straddle his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck.

“’She’?” I echo, unable to contain my grin. Cardan’s wearing a sheepish smirk while I lean against him, running my fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck.

“Or he.” He corrects himself at first, but then seems to think better of it. “No, I confess it: it ought to be a daughter. Greenbriar males are notoriously horrid. We should only have daughters if we can help it.”

“Well, we can’t,” I say, trying to suppress a laugh, which he likes. His hands begin to roam my hips, my waist, and I can’t remember the last time I felt well enough to enjoy this. His eyes are sparkling in firelight when I press against him and softly take his lips, my fingers in his thick, dark hair. He lets out a soft sigh, his hands splayed against my back as he pulls me to him harder.

“Not all the Greenbriar men are horrid,” I murmur against his mouth.

“But the odds are not great,” he says back, sounding breathless. I like nothing better than the hoarse quality of his voice when desire begins to overtake him, and I pull back to kiss his jaw, the trail of his neck, until his fingers twist in the fabric of my nightgown.

“Oh, Jude, how I’ve missed you,” he whispers, his voice rough with lust. Yearning rushes through my veins at the sound, and I realize I have missed him like this, too. The neckline of my nightgown slips over my shoulder as I take his jaw in my hands and kiss him harder. He groans into my mouth when I grind my hips against him, my body smoldering when he runs his hands up my thighs.

But then abruptly, he breaks away from my lips.

“Is this safe?” he asks, his voice suddenly clear as he looks up at me with concern. My face is burning, the whole of me is burning, and I can’t believe he has the nerve to stop right now, after how long it’s been.

“What?” I sound like I’ve just run a mile.

“It’s so small still.” His eyes drift to my still-flat stomach. “I could hurt it before it even comes out.”

“That’s,” I’m still panting when I shake my head, “that’s not possible.”

“Are you certain?” He looks genuinely ruffled, biting at his kiss-swollen lip. “You’re certain I can’t stab it?”

I can’t help rolling my eyes.

“ _Oh my God,_ Cardan, stop flattering yourself and read the damn books.”

It’s not long until he gives up his worry and gives in – although, it was never a real struggle to begin with. My own worry that has plagued me for weeks melts down in front of the fire as I do away with the buttons on his shirt. In his arms, I can feel that, while everything around us is changing, here we are the same as we’ve always been. I have not lost a thing.

After I’ve peeled off Cardan’s shirt, he hoists us off the sofa with a groan, my legs wrapped around his waist. I circle my arms over his shoulders as he moves us toward the bed.

“I should put in a few more hours in training,” he grunts, “so I can still do this for my beloved troll when she arrives.”

“That will be the last time you call me a troll,” I inform him, “unless you’re enjoying watching me wail sad pregnant tears.”

“It is only slightly less terrifying than being held at the business end of your knife,” and with that, he settles me into the bed.

I pull him to me, desperate for his soft mouth, for the familiar weight of him against me. His hands are slipping up my nightgown, pulling it over my head, and I’m lost to all else in the world but Cardan.

The fire dies down in the hearth long before we’re finally spent and breathless in the tangle of each other’s limbs.

“Were you holding your breath?” Cardan asks me in the dark, sleepy and dozing.

“My sense of smell is just really sensitive right now,” I hum, my eyes closed. “I didn’t want to ruin this by barfing all over you.”

“That might be one of the kindest things you’ve ever done for me,” Cardan teases, and I give him an exhausted poke in the chest.

I fall asleep bare against him, his arm and his tail both wrapped around my waist as if to cradle what I held inside. I was certain, just before I fell off to sleep, I heard him murmur in my ear, “I love you both. With every bit of my heart.”

When I awake the next morning, the same familiar rush of nausea flood my stomach and my throat. It’s late in the morning already – Cardan has already gotten up and left me to sleep in, which is more than a little unusual. Though I won’t deny I need the sleep.

I groan, feeling my empty stomach pitch and complain. I’m going to throw up again. I’m still naked when I roll over and grab for the wash basin at the side of the bed. It’s the most vulnerable and disgusting I think I’ve ever felt, completely exposed and dry heaving into a ceramic basin until I’m sweaty. Any rosy feelings I had the night before are quickly evaporating. This still sucks as much as it ever has.

But when I sit back to catch my breath, riding the wave of nausea down, I look across the sheets where we’d tumbled and slept. My queasy insides freeze completely.

There are two small stains of blood on the rumpled sheets.

I’ve begun to bleed.


	3. The Third

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a first trimester scare, Jude and Cardan venture to the mortal realm to find a real mortal doctor and discover quite a lot in the process.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the comments and love! It's so much fun to write for people who squee and rejoice over fluff and cute, too. <3 You guy are awesome!!

I think maybe I am meant to be a cautionary tale, not a happy ending.

I think that someone who has manipulated and lied and schemed as much as I have is destined only for tragedy.

And now it’s finally come for me.

I think this over and over again, like a spell I’m chanting to grant myself some measure of grim acceptance, while Cardan and I ride a ragwort horse all the way to the mortal realm. It’s the best course of action we can come up with in the moment of panic.

The moment I knew we were facing a potentially devastating complication, I wanted – no, _needed_ – a human doctor.

Pregnancy is rare among the Folk, and I now find I’m not interested in trusting faerie midwives with a decidedly human condition. If there is something wrong with me, or with our baby, I want to know what it is, everything about it. I don’t trust anyone who might want to strike a deal for my child’s wellbeing or concoct some potion that, while saving the pregnancy, also gives our baby a third eye or snaggle-teeth or an appetite for blood. I’m also having flashbacks of a conversation long ago with Oriana, when she divulged details of Oak’s horrific birth. How there’d been complications that had cost Liriope her life. How Oriana herself had carved the baby out of her friend’s stomach.

I shudder hard at the recollection and press my cheek hard against Cardan’s back as we ride, my face between his shoulder blades. Hard pass. On every bit of that. Just – _one massive hard pass_. We are finding a real doctor.

Cardan didn’t even argue. Though he insisted it was time to tell The Court of Shadows, if only for safety reasons while we made an unannounced, unplanned emergency run to the mortal realm.

Nothing goes like either of us had hoped. There are no tears of joy. There are only tight, grim expressions and tense words while plans are made. How we will prevent our enemies from learning of the child and our absence. How we will remain protected while among mortals.

I have hardly a word of help to offer, and that alone is horrifying. I have always schemed and survived – it’s what I am. But there, instead, I can only sit with a hand at my flat stomach, my sole focus on willing this little rebel in me to hear her mother’s first command.

_Don’t go. Please. I love you._

_Please stay._

_Please._

I’ve resented this for weeks, and now I’m begging for the nausea, the aches, the exhaustion to stay – all of it. Any reassurance that I’m not losing this newfound love before I’ve even really gotten to know it.

But I also wonder if I should just accept fate. I have always felt from the beginning that I did not deserve this. That I am stealing a happiness that I have not earned.

“How are you faring?” Cardan asks me over his shoulder, the whine of the wind in my ears. We’re somewhere over the sea, jostled by the roll of the ragwort horse’s gallop beneath us.

“The same,” I answer. Sick. Dizzy. Terrified of what comes next. Unconsciously, I grip his body to mine harder. He’s tense, every muscle on edge. This is unlike any journey we’ve made yet. There’s nothing to fight, and still everything to lose.

“Nearly there,” says Cardan, but it sounds like he’s saying it more for his own benefit. He hates the journey over the sea, the precariousness of ragwort horse travel. I’m not in any state to offer reassurances, or even tease him to lighten the mood.

Sure enough, the clouds part, and the city lights along the coast of Maine wink up at us. It’s evening, and dark beneath a heavy rain cloud, and as soon as we’re low enough, we’re being pelted with sheets of rain. By the time the ragwort horse alights its oaken-hooves on the pavement, Cardan and I are both soaked to the skin.

We dismount, invisible beneath a glamour, at the far end of a hospital parking lot. The sign at the entrance glows with a red cross and the name, Down East Community Hospital. It was the best I could think of to do at a moment’s notice: instruct the ragwort horse to find us an emergency room.

I wrap my arms around myself as Cardan holds out a hand to gather up the horse. The leaves of its mane and the bark-like coat of its body begin to curl in on itself, like a plant rolling in on itself for the night. A moment later, it’s only a few leafy twigs that Cardan can hide in his pocket.

We both look absurd, and I’m just now realizing it. We look like we’ve just run out of a community theatre dress rehearsal for a low-budget melodrama. Cardan’s tried to dress down, but he’s still Cardan, and he’s wearing tight black trousers and tall boots over his calves. He’s thrown one of the zip-up hoodies I keep in my wardrobe for trips to the mortal realm over a loose white shirt. He also must have been feeling particularly festive this morning after last night’s romp, and he’d gone and added a bit of kohl to his eyes before I’d woken up and shit hit the fan. And he’s still wearing gold rings all over his fingers and in his pointed ears. Combined with his soaked, inky hair, he looks a bit like a member of an 80’s rock cover band who’s recovering from being pushed into a pool.

It’s kind of nice. He rarely looks a mess. It makes me feel like we’re in this together, at least.

For my part, I didn’t let Tatterfell braid my auburn hair today, and now it’s just long and windblown, so I’ve tried to pull it all to one side to keep it managed. I’m wearing a simple pair of brown trousers with little silken flats that were my least flashy pair of shoes. I’ve got a shirt and olive-colored vest on beneath a hoodie similar to Cardan’s that was supposed to keep me warm, but now it’s sopping wet.

We both pulls the hoods on our sweatshirts up over our heads as we make a mad dash for the automatic sliding doors of the ER, racing against the onslaught of rain. Once we’re inside the vestibule between sliding doors, I stop a moment to grab Cardan’s arm and gather myself. He puts a bejeweled hand over mine, his expression tightened in concern.

“I’ve never done this before,” I confess, breathless. Hospitals, emergency rooms, doctors. It’s all foreign to me.

“I’ve done it even less.” Cardan’s looking more pale by the minute. The rising terror in both of us is palpable.

“I should call Vivi,” I spout, and Cardan’s nodding furiously in agreement, for once graciously not pointing out how he’s been saying this very thing for weeks.

But when I look around, there’s not a phone in sight. There’s only a poorly lit waiting room on the other side of the glass vestibule, and bored-looking nurses waiting at intake windows. _Shit._ _Shit._ How do mortals do this? How to they get treatments for mortal ailments and weaknesses and not fall to pieces fretting over their inherent, inevitable vulnerability in the process?

Suddenly, the surety of immortality is looking rather cowardly by comparison.

“Maybe one of the nurses will let me commandeer a phone,” I mutter, and I let my fingers slide from Cardan’s arm to his hand. My palm is starting to sweat when he laces our fingers together, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

The glass door to the waiting room slides with a hissing whisper, and inside there are people crowded in the cheap chairs lining the walls. Somewhere, a toddler is wailing out of sheer boredom while the evening news anchors jabber on a TV mounted in the far corner above a potted plant. Cardan’s already drawing stares with his ominous, messy appearance. He found a beanie in the pocket of the sweatshirt to cover the pointed tips of his ears, but there’s still kohl streaking his prominent cheekbones. I’m gonna need to clean him up at some point.

Right now, all I’m focused on is slipping into the first open intake seat and figuring out how in the hell I’m going to see a doctor for the first time in my mortal life. I am going to be brave. I have trained for nothing less.

“Hi, how can we help you today?” says a warm-looking middle-aged nurse behind the desk. She has short grey hair and floral scrubs, and a pair of readers perched on the bridge of her nose. Her badge says her name is Josie.

“Um.” My mouth feels dry, but I push on anyway. “I am—I am pregnant, and, um, I’m having some…” I draw in a shaking breath. Why is this so hard? “Some bleeding. I think I need to see a doctor right away.”

“Of course, honey,” Josie says, and peers over her readers. “Have you spoken with your OB?”

“I don’t have one,” I shake my head, my face starting to flush as Josie’s concern increases. I’ve never felt like I belonged in the mortal realm, and it’s never felt more apparent that I’m an outsider.

“Okaaay,” Josie says, slowly, adjusting her readers as she turns to her computer. “Let’s get you registered. Name?”

I hesitate again. I’ve never given my name in any sort of official capacity here among mortals. Especially not since I’d gotten married. What do I want to be called?

“Jude Duarte-Greenbriar,” I hear myself answer. From the chair beside me, Cardan titters a little amused laugh to himself and then bites it back when I shoot him a look. He likes the sound of it, too.

“Okaaay,” Josie says again, pecking at her keyboard. “I’m gonna need you to spell that for me, honey.”

I appall Josie further as the registration process yields the fact that I have neither a driver’s license nor an insurance card. With each of Josie’s judgmental sighs, I can sense Cardan stiffening with repressed irritation next to me, and it’s only stressing me out more. I should have had a talk with him first about promising not to curse anyone. I’m half-expecting Josie to sprout cat ears at any minute.

“While we can’t legally decline services based on insurance,” Josie says, doing little to suppress her concern, “I will need you to sign this agreement that says you understand that, since you are not presenting insurance today, you will be personally responsible for the entire cost of today’s visit.” And she shifts a clipboard toward me.

“Oh, look, love,” Cardan suddenly chimes in. He slides a wet leaf from his pocket across the registration desk as his voice takes on the heady, dangerous quality of magic. He’s conjuring a glamour. “I think you can see all of the insurance information you require here.”

“Oh, good, you found your card!” Josie exclaims, delighted, as she takes the leaf and begins happily clacking away at her keyboard.

“Do _not_ get carried away,” I hiss at Cardan while Josie’s distracted. “That should be a one time thing.”

But Cardan just slits his kohl-lined eyes at me, looking like the smug bastard he’s always been, and leans an elbow on the registration desk, throwing Josie a coy smile. The glamour in his voice when he speaks again is just as sinfully seductive.

“And Josie, my sweet,” he says, “you’ll let my wife borrow your phone to speak with her sister, won’t you, dearest?”

“Of course, Mr. Greenbriar,” Josie replies, with the charmed-sweet smile of the glamoured. She shifts her desk phone to me, handing me the handset. “Just press nine for outgoing calls, honey,” she tells me.

I’m frowning at Cardan’s wicked smirk as I accept the phone.

“I don’t think that was entirely necessary,” I whisper to him while Josie types away. He grins at me. I don’t really want to admit that he’s just been pretty useful, and he knows it.

Regardless of how ill-gotten this privilege is, I do need Vivi. I dial her cell phone, one of two numbers I know, and wait while it rings.

And rings.

And rings.

“She might be screening her calls,” I say to Josie, sheepishly. “Her father is…” Oh, how to describe what Madoc is like these days. “…over-bearing and tricky.” And I hang up and try again. Josie gives a tight, uncomfortable smile, peering over her readers.

“You are not concerned about how unusual this is,” Cardan tells her, the glamour dripping off his voice, and I smack his arm to get him to stop. Josie settles again as the phone keeps ringing.

I have to hang up and dial two more times before Vivi finally picks up. She sounds irritated when she answers.

“Vivi, this is Jude,” I say, slumping in relief that she’s finally answered.

“ _Jude?_ Seriously? What?” The annoyance in her voice vanishes as she’s scrambling to understand. “You’re calling me? Where are you? Are you ok?”

“I’m at the Down East Community Hospital emergency room,” I say. “Can you come?”

“Oh, my God.” It sounds like Vivi’s suddenly frantically looking for her keys. “Yes, I’m coming. I’ll be there. Why are you there? What’s going on?”

“It’s a lot to explain over the phone,” I say, slowly, white-knuckling the handset. “I’m ok, and Cardan’s here, but I just really need you.” I hate it more than anything, but I can’t keep the frightened younger sister out of my voice now that I’m actually talking to Vivi about this. The first rush of relief hits me when Vivi replies without hesitation:

“Ok. It’s gonna be ok. I’m on my way.”

I let out a long breath as I hand the phone back to Josie.

“The nurse will call you back when they’re ready for you,” says Josie, and gestures to the crowded waiting room. “Have a seat.”

“ _Or--_ ” Cardan starts, leaning forward, and I know he’s about to throw out another glamour to speed things along. In the blink of an eye, I clap a hand over his mouth before he can say another word.

“Thank you,” I tell Josie, through a gritted smile, and urge Cardan to move along.

“Your moral stance on glamours ought to have a loophole where our child is concerned,” Cardan gripes as we shuffle to the nearest available two chairs.

“You Folk are like addicts with glamours,” I snap back as we take a seat. “You don’t know when to stop.”

“I believe I’ve proven myself capable of great restraint,” Cardan says, looking miffed for a moment until a People magazine on a nearby table catches his eye and his curiosity of mortals gets the better of him.

He has the right idea, I think. Distraction would be the key to getting my mind off the blood and not falling apart right now. I’ve done everything I can at this point, and now we must wait.

I busy myself for a moment by wrapping the cuff of my sleeve over my fingers and wiping off the rain-splattered streaks of kohl off Cardan’s face, so that the father of my child looks less like the troubled D-list celebrities his People magazine is trashing. He’s not drawing any less attention, but there’s not much either of us can do about that. If you’re not accustomed to the allure of the Folk, it’s nigh impossible to not stare and stare and try to decipher what it is about them that’s so otherworldly. But at least now they’re staring for the right reasons and not at his ruined eyeliner.

With nothing more at arm’s length to distract me, I rest my head against the wallpaper behind me and let my vision go unfocused in the general direction of the TV in the corner. I don’t want to think about the whining toddler in the room, who’s mad at his mother for not bringing the right stuffed animal with them to the hospital. What would I do with a half-human child in Faerie who fell ill or wounded? What would we do? Would the land let Cardan heal him? Would we have to make this journey again? _What if I forgot the right stuffed animal, too??_

Amazing that I’m suddenly assuming this child is going to survive whatever’s happening now, I realize, and this worry spiral is helping no one.

Once upon a time, I’d been the girl determined to become a thing feared. What has happened inside me, that I’m now this terrified woman? I hate it. I hate it, and I don’t know how to stop it.

“You’re not afraid of that everything will change?” I remember asking Cardan, three moons ago. I had thrown out the last of my birth control that day. We’d snuck away from a revel to lie beneath the massive tree that grew out of the top of the palace of Elfhame, staring at the stars above and dreaming of what they could hold.

Cardan looked to me, his hands behind his head in the loam, his crown slightly askew. He smiled, and the moonlight made him almost too beautiful to bear.

“I cherish every change you’ve ever brought me, Jude,” he said, and he stretched out a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers softly lingering at its rounded edges. “I don’t see why this should be any different.”

“You’ve not always felt so gracious about the changes I’ve foisted upon you,” I pointed out. “And you don’t get to exile me now if my parenting pisses you off.”

I’m not sure what I thought he’d think of such a statement, but it was out in the night air anyway. His gold-rimmed eyes darkened as he pulled his hand back, folding it over his chest. I watched him as he stared up at the stars again, waiting for his response, and with each second, regret began to sink in.

“I consider myself fairly thick-skinned,” he said at last, “but that was uncalled for.”

“I was teasing--” I started, but he shot me a dark look.

“There was a measure of truth in your voice,” he countered. “You don’t lie as well as you think you do.”

“I don’t see what you’re so put out about,” I huffed, pulling back to glare at the night sky. “You weren’t the one living in exile.”

“Not this again,” Cardan groaned, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Five years, Jude. It’s been five years,” he sighed into his palms.

“And now we’re discussing children, and it’s a very large and potentially aggravating change,” I said. “Maybe I am a little wary.”

“Of _me?”_ The moment I saw the unguarded devastation on Cardan’s face, it was like I’d slapped him, and not in the fun way. I wanted to be swallowed down by the loam, covered in a grassy grave. Everything about this was awful. I wanted children with this man. Why was I dredging up ancient history?

But Cardan had been right. There’d been a measure of truth to it. It’s been a deliriously wonderful five years, but we are not entirely new people. We have a terrible past. And I feared what demons a significant change like this could summon.

When I didn’t answer right away, Cardan sat up so his back was to me, burying his head in his hands.

“Cardan…” I shifted so that I was propped up on my hands.

“What else can I give you to make this right?” he fretted to the ground in front of him. “I have given you everything. Every part of me, everything you see before you. It was wrong for both of us to take our games as far as we did, but I would have thought by now--”

“It was an off-handed comment made in poor taste.” I wanted to put a stop to everything that was happening. Rewind the whole evening.

Instead, he looked over his shoulder at me, visibly aching.

“I will not be like my father. I refuse it,” he retorted, and when I cocked my head to the side, not understanding, he went on. “Eldred collected consorts and sired children the way some people curate shoes: to suit his vanity. And I have that in spades already; there’s no need to spawn more. What I would want for a child, more than anything, is to not know what it is to grow up as an accessory. To not fear that his mother will be discarded. Jude, if you cannot trust so little of me, then this is poorly timed. Perhaps we need another five years. Or ten. Or however long you require.”

I sat up and scooted next to him, tucking my chin against his shoulder.

“I trust you,” I assured him in a whisper, and, as if he couldn’t help it, his eyes closed as he leaned his head towards mine. He smelled like oakwood and leather, like everything I’ve ever wanted. “I would not still be with you if I did not trust you.”

I wanted to push back the thick curls from his forehead, and so I did. And held my palm against his jaw as I leaned my forehead to his while the stars twinkled overhead.

Five years later, and sometimes we’re still finding little bits of armor that need to come off. For me, becoming a fearsome thing is not an option for handling motherhood, just as Cardan refuses to mirror his father’s vanity. But when I take off this bit of armor, this need to be feared and respected, it feels as if there is nothing underneath yet. Only vulnerability. Only terror.

I think of it now, in the ER waiting room of the Down East Community Hospital, while I snake my arm through his, looking at him while he’s ogling People magazine. He looks a mess, and there is no one I trust more. I’m still not convinced we’re shining examples of excellent would-be parents. But I’m afraid and vulnerable in the worst ways, and there’s no one I’d rather see me through it.

“Eldred would never have done something like this for any of his consorts,” I point out to him in a whisper, and he looks back at me with a pleased smirk.

“You are my _wife_ ,” he indicates, and gives my cold knuckles a swift kiss before turning back to whatever filth is engrossing him in People.

“Jude Duarte-Greenbriar?” There’s a nurse at the emergency room door calling my name. I draw in a breath. Here we go.

The nurse in blue scrubs takes my vitals and makes us somewhat comfortable in a makeshift space where we’re surrounded by taupe-colored curtains on three sides while I wait on a hospital bed. There’s a squeaky grey plastic chair for Cardan to sit on, and no more TV or People magazine – just the assurance that a doctor will see me soon. And then we’re left with our dread to stare at the taupe curtains around us, listening to the squeak of hurried shoe soles against linoleum and the occasional beeping of hospital pagers. The air is acrid, like someone’s tried to scrub it clean, and it’s making my stomach lurch. It must show on my face as I swallow hard against the rising bile, because Cardan swiftly hands me a blue plastic barf bag that the nurse has left him in charge of. He’s wary of my empty threats to aim for his shoes.

“Jude, are you decent?” calls a voice from the other side of the curtain. “You have visitors.”

The curtains scrape against their tracks on the ceiling, and I can’t hold back a relief grin at the sight of Vivi and Heather.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” It’s all Vivi can say as she sweeps in to wrap me in a hug.

“Hey,” Heather graciously greets Cardan while the two are awkward to the side. She’s looking effortlessly cool, with her shoulder-length pink hair in soft waves. She has holes in her jeans in all the right places, and she’s wearing a breezy, colorful boho top that shows off her brown shoulders. I try to give her a wave while Vivi is squeezing the life out of me.

“What are you doing here?” Vivi demands when she pulls away, holding me by the shoulders. She’s given her golden hair a short, edgey chop that almost hides the pointed tips of her half-fae ears when it falls the right way. She tends to favor t-shirts and jeans, but today she’s in tight black pants and a grey v-neck under a jacket, and I’m hoping I haven’t interrupted a date.

“Well.” I shift a glance between the two of them, simultaneously gladdened that they’re here and nervous with how I now I have break the news. “This isn’t how I wanted you to find out…” And then Vivi gasps.

“Are you pregnant?!” she squeaks.

“Oh, my God, V,” Heather rolls her eyes. “You can’t ask people if they’re pregnant.”

“She’s right, though,” I interject. “I am.”

“Jude!” Vivi exclaims, fondly, and takes my face in her hands, and, for a brief moment, I realize this is all I’ve been wanting for weeks. I grin, sheepishly. Then Vivi narrows her cat-like eyes at Cardan.

“You _knocked up_ my sister?” she jabs.

“Bold of you to assume it’s mine,” he quips back, and Vivi feigns a disgusted gasp as throw the empty barf bag at him.

“Force of habit,” Cardan tells Heather with a shrug.

“Congratulations, Cardan,” Heather replies, giving him a pat on the shoulder.

“But why are you _here?_ ” Vivi turns to me again. “Does Taryn know? Does Madoc?”

“No on both counts,” I shake my head. “It’s early. And we’re here because--” _Ugh_ , I hate this. I _hate_ this. “I started bleeding.”

“Oh, no.” Heather’s face is etched with genuine concern. It’s been a roller coaster of a few minutes.

“But why are you _here_?” Vivi tries again, and I see what she’s getting at. Why not be seen to by the royal midwives?

“I’m mortal,” I say, quietly. “This is a mortal thing. I felt like I needed a mortal doctor.”

And Vivi takes my face in her hands.

“I completely, one-hundred-percent agree,” she says, whole-heartedly, and there’s relief there, too. She’s always wanted me to spend more time in the mortal realm.

We crowd around the hospital bed for a while to catch up. Heather makes a run to the vending machine to bring back some snacks, and soon the tightness in my chest is releasing and unwinding. This was the distraction I needed. For a few minutes there, I could almost forget what had brought us to this weird, curtained-off corner to begin with.

But then the curtain scrape on the track again. There’s an orderly waiting there in blue scrubs, pushing a wheelchair.

“They’re ready for you in ultrasound now, Jude,” he tells me, and indicates that I’m supposed to ride in the chair. I bristle at the gesture. I’m not sure of the last time I’ve been asked to do something so vulnerable and humiliating. I am not _ill._ I don’t need this.

Vivi notices and puts a hand at my arm.

“It’s just standard hospital procedure, Jude,” she says, in her tone of voice she uses to convince Oak to eat vegetables.

So I comply. Heather and Vivi tell us they’ll wait for us to get back, and then we’re off. Cardan follows the orderly, and every once and awhile, I hear him having to jog to catch up – he’s easily distracted by what all the mortals are up to in this place.

I’m wheeled into a dark room with an exam table. Next to it is a bunch of strange equipment I’ve never seen before – screens and wands and all sort of buttons. A technician waits for us there, a woman in pink scrubs with a badge that says her name is Brenna. Her dark, curly hair is pulled back tight against her scalp, and she has kind brown eyes that smile when she tells me to make myself comfortable on the exam table.

“And is this Dad?” Brenna wants to know, cheerfully waving Cardan in to have a seat on a grey plastic chair next to me.

“Not _my_ dad,” I say, not understanding the question at first. Then it dawns on me. “I mean, he’s the father, yes. Of the baby.” _Oh, my God._ This is off to a great start. Cardan’s trying very hard to not laugh outright at me and failing miserably. His laugh comes out like one long snort.

“Happens all the time,” Brenna says, with another cheerful wave, which makes me wonder why she’s still asking it, then.

“First baby?” Brenna now wants to know, making small talk while she’s queuing up her equipment.

“First everything,” I reply, hoping that will explain my nerves. “First baby, first ultrasound, first try.”

“ _Oh.”_ Brenna sounds impressed and looks to Cardan as she wheels around in her swivel chair. “Nice shootin’, Tex,” she tells him, with a wink.

“Thank you, Brenna,” Cardan accepts graciously, puffing out his chest a little. I roll my eyes.

“This may be the only time I’m ever complimented on my marksmanship,” he tells me. “Let me have this moment.”

“All right!” Brenna interrupts. “Let’s see what you’re cookin’ in there, mama.”

She rolls up my shirt and tucks in some scratchy paper into my leggings. Then squirts some cold gel across my abdomen. I watch in fascination while she rolls her device over my stomach, and then she turns her screen to us.

“And here’s your little guy,” she says. “Or gal. Can’t tell yet, obviously.”

For a moment, time stops.

Next to me, Cardan draws in a breath.

Something squirmy and _alive_ curls and stretches in the grainy black and white pixels of Brenna’s screen. It doesn’t look quite human. Or fae. It looks kind of alien, if I’m being honest. But I can see its tiny limbs and the outline of its perfectly round head, and it’s _moving._ Like a manic little seahorse, our little shrimp is bobbing all over the place, alive and well.

“Looking good,” Brenna says, and Cardan barks out a surprised laugh. I’m smiling so hard my face might break. 

“Oh, I was sure I’d stabbed it,” Cardan sighs in relief, slumping in his seat, and it’s my turn to laugh.

“That’s not actually possible,” Brenna tells him, and maybe now he’ll believe it. “Let’s see if we can hear the heartbeat.”

She clicks and clacks at some buttons, then turns a knob. Pushes a little harder on my abdomen.

A fluttering, steady whooshing sound fills the speakers in the room. I don’t know when I grabbed Cardan’s hand, but I’m squeezing it hard now. I glance at him. He’s utterly transfixed on the screen, his dark eyes wide, his lips parted. He looks like how I feel when I’m in bearing witness to great and ancient magic.

This isn’t all vomit and exhaustion. _This is happening. This is real._

We are making something new. Something entirely unique. _Like magic._

“Ok, this might be your issue.” Brenna breaks the enchantment, zooming in on something dark on her screen. My heart, which moments before felt like it might burst, squeezes and contracts in panic now.

“This is a sub-chorionic hematoma,” she says, pointing to the screen and making some notes. “The doctor will explain all this to you.”

“What is it?” Cardan’s voice is tight, panic thinly-veiled. “Is it dangerous?”

“They’re pretty common,” says Brenna, not looking at us while she takes measurements and notes. Like she drops these kinds of bombs regularly. “It’s basically an accumulation of blood between the uterine wall and the fetal membrane. It can cause bleeding, especially as the baby gets bigger and jostles it around. They usually resolve without much issue.”

“Usually?” Cardan’s not assuaged.

“Well, again,” Brenna says, looking at him sidelong, “the doctor will read this and give his advice. But it can increase the risk of miscarriage in some cases. Not always, though. The doctor will tell you how he wants you to treat it, but it usually involves some bed rest or limited activity, nothing too strenuous or crazy. Don’t go horse-back riding!” And she laughs as if only a crazy person would get on a horse while pregnant.

I look to Cardan. He looks to me. It’s hit us at the same time.

The ragwort horse.

_How the hell are we getting home?_

“Huh.” I barely had time to digest my realization about the ragwort horse before Brenna was back with more. She swivels the device on my stomach around some more. Cocks her head to the side.

“Are either of you a twin?” she asks.

Cardan points at me like I’ve done something wrong he doesn’t want to be blamed for.

“Why?” I ask, slowly, cautiously.

“It _does_ run in families,” Brenna says, and turns the screen to us again. “And I’m seeing two babies here.” She looks back at Cardan. “And on the _first try_ , Tex,” she says, looking impressed again.

Now, nothing feels real. I think I might leave my body. There are two squirmy aliens in the black and white screen, the lazier of the two now floating into view. Brenna adjusts the knobs some more to bring the new heartbeat into focus, just as strong as the first.

“ _Jude._ ” I can’t decipher what Cardan’s feeling now. He looks unlike I’ve ever seen him before. Something between elation and sheer dread is warring between his wide eyes and furrowed brow. He grips at the beanie over his hair like he’s trying to keep his own head from flying off.

“Are you and your twin identical?” Brenna asks. I nod, stupidly.

“These, too,” she nods, and points at the screen. “See: they’re sharing a sac.” She draws in a deep breath. “This does elevate the risk more, with the hematoma. The doctor will go over all of this with you. But I’ll bet he’ll want you on some kind of bed rest. Weekly check-ups. That sort of thing.” And then she squints hard at the screen. “What is _that?”_ she wonders aloud. “Is that a _tail_?”

“You don’t see a tail,” Cardan says, but he’s so flustered and shell-shocked, he’s forgotten to use the glamour.

“I think I might, though.” Brenna squints harder.

“You don’t see a tail,” Cardan says, louder and hurried, this time with the weight of magic heavy in his tone. “Everything you see looks normal to you.”

A glamoured smile flutters over Brenna’s pleasant features as she lifts the device from my belly and clicks off her equipment.

“Everything looks normal,” she hums, happily. “Congratulations, you two.”

“Everything but the hematoma, right?” I cock my head to the side as she rolls away her swivel chair. “The doctor will speak to us about that.”

“What hematoma?” Brenna’s still smiling as she stands with her clipboard. “Everything looks normal. I’m going to call an orderly, but pretty much you’re free to go. Congratulations!”

“ _Cardan,”_ I accuse under my breath as she leaves, leveling a glare at him.

“You are carrying _twins_.” He’s just agape at me, either unaware or unrattled by how the poor wording in his glamour just muddled everything.

“The doctor won’t know about the hematoma now!” I exclaim.

“We’ll scrounge up another one somewhere,” Cardan waves me off. “Jude. _Twins.”_

It’s not helping me feel any better, him saying it over and over again. I slump into my hands, weighted by disbelief and frustration. What am I going to do? This can’t possibly be real, can it?

“I am going to get so huge,” I moan into my palms in self-pity. I know it’s vain, but at the moment, it’s all I can think. In the land of willowy Folk, I already stick out like a sore thumb. Now I’m going to be a sore _and_ massively swollen thumb.

Cardan’s shifted to stand in front of me on the exam table. And he runs his hands up and down my arms, almost reverent.

“You are magnificent,” he reassures me, softly, and presses a kiss against my head.

“Why are you not freaking out?” I ask, and pull him by the hoodie pockets so I can hug him again if I need it. I think I may need it. “This is two babies. We don’t even know Thing One about taking care of one baby, and now there will be two.”

“We may require a few more house cats,” Cardan jokes, and when I scowl, he asks, “That’s still not amusing? I shall persist. One of these days.”

“You know, I hear that’s a mortal fatherhood trait,” I point out. “Persisting over and over with the same unamusing joke to the embarrassment of everyone around you.” And I wrap my arms around his waist as I look up at him. He’s warm, and everything is a little more bearable when he’s close and smiling.

“I think you are implying that I’m excelling at fatherhood so far,” Cardan grins down at me, and I’m surprised to see it looks as if his gold-rimmed eyes are glistening.

“Are you all right?” I ask, softening at the sight. He blinks, furiously, as he buries his long fingers in the hair at the nape of my neck, holding me close as he looks over my face.

“I just--” His voice is hoarse when he starts, so he clears it and tries again. “This is more than I ever dared to consider,” he says. “I did not dream that this kind of life would ever be an option for me. Family that looked after each other, that loved each other – that always seemed to me to be a strictly mortal gift. As if the Folk had bargained for everlasting life long ago and forsook all hope of familial love in the process. I had accepted that it wasn’t mine to have. But _you._ ”

He shifts his hands so that he holds my face, and I feel swallowed by the adoration in his admission. All I can do is close my eyes as he holds me. I can think of nothing else when his nose brushes my forehead.

“I am overcome by all you have given me,” he whispers, and I think I might cry. My hands twist in the fabric of the sweatshirt he wears.

“I love your words,” I whisper back, “but you give me too much credit.” I pull back to look at his mirthful, glistening eyes and say: “If it were left up to me, I would never have given you twins.”

He laughs outright, unguarded and thrilled.

“Lucky for me, then,” he says, and kisses me.

I have kissed him hundreds, maybe thousands of times. We have shared passionate, unbridled kisses and desperate, devouring kisses. We’ve kissed at quick partings, and we’ve kissed with soft, gentle comfort. I like everything about them all. But this is something entirely new, something that surprises me still. It’s filled with gratitude and promises and dreams of the future, and though it is intimate, I would not have felt ashamed if someone had walked in.

It’s the kiss of complete trust, and in that moment, I feel assured that, in Cardan, I have not made a mistake. There is much to figure out still. But this is _right._

So, we will have twins. I will meet this challenge with resolve. For right now, anyway, the quantity of babies is the least of our concerns.

“How in the hell am I supposed to get home?” I ask, the moment we pull apart. Cardan rests his hands on my shoulders, screwing up his beautiful mouth in thought. The ragwort horse. The bed rest. The doctor we must scrounge up somewhere. There are a dozen new bullets swirling on a to-do list, and none of them lead us back to Faerie any time soon.

“I haven’t the foggiest,” he confesses. “Which further complicates matters, because there is absolutely no chance that I am leaving you here.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” I say, and press back a smile. “And also glad,” I add.

Cardan meets my smile with a little wicked smirk of his own.

“Is it time we scheme together once again?” he asks.

We cannot get home until this is resolved, and we cannot leave Faerie ungoverned. I have no idea where to even start on this problem.

But that’s certainly never stopped us before.

There’s a knock at the door. The orderly has arrived with the wheelchair to take us back to Vivi and Heather. I give Cardan a secret, knowing smile.

“I suppose it is,” I agree.


	4. The Fourth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we’re back! I made this chapter extra long as an I’m sorry for taking two whole months to get you a new chapter. I’M SORRY! Lots of set up happening here for future chapters. I’m going to try to be more consistent with this so writing it doesn’t take longer than an actual pregnancy.

“Well, it finally happened.” I resign to the floor-length mirror in Vivi’s master bedroom. The reflection shows me the defiant zipper on my jeans. It tried its best, but the zipper is no match for The Bump.

I turn around so Cardan can enjoy the zipper’s defeat. He’s reclined on Vivi and Heather’s queen bed, one hand behind his head, while he uses a Firestick to flip through show titles on Netflix on the TV across the room. He hasn’t gotten dressed yet at all, but that’s pretty typical. Cardan will lie around naked until he absolutely must wear clothes. Right now, he’s got the blankets up over his lap, his tail swishing lazily over the edge of the bed.

He grins at the sight of my swelling belly.

“Who needs pants anyway?” he says, looking back at the TV. He’s been mildly obsessed with a show where body paint artists compete against each other, and he’s on the prowl for more. “Every part of you is a delight.”

I can’t help grinning back as I shimmy out of the too-tight pants and then crawl the bed back to him in just an oversized orange t-shirt that once belonged to Heather. He’s distractedly scrolling through Netflix when I grab his chin so I can plant a kiss on his cheek. Mercifully, his oakwood scent no longer hits me as overpowering. The intense nausea I’d battled for weeks has vanished as abruptly as it arrived.

“The rest of the world might not find my underwear as delightful as you do,” I say. _Gods,_ he smells amazing, actually. Like a breath of fresh forest air, like cedar and sage. I take in another deep breath against his neck, and he chuckles when I kiss his jaw, then the soft space just beneath.

“ _Jude_ ,” he starts, a reluctant warning in his voice. _Ugh._ I don’t want to hear it. I want relish how well I’m finally feeling for the first time in weeks. I want to feel better than _well_. I want to feel…to feel…

My thoughts dissolve when I run my hand over the hard planes of Cardan’s bare chest. I love the sounds he makes when I nip at his ear, the cold metal of the rings in his lobes against my lips. He shivers a little, his thick eyelashes fluttering, and he strains to focus his attention on the TV.

“ _Jude._ ” The warning’s a little stronger in his voice this time, but I’m not thinking straight because I can tell he’s melting a little, and I’ve never been able to resist the feel of him breaking apart under my hands. I trace his jawline. Turn his face to mine.

I’m ready to devour his lips when his mouth slides against mine.

He sighs likes he’s being stretched on the rack when I roll onto his lap, raking my fingers down his chest. For a moment, his hands slide up my bare thighs while I kiss him harder, gripping, pulling. His tail snakes around my calf down to my ankle, and, for a moment, I think, _To hell with it all._ I can feel between my legs how he responds, nothing but sheets separating us, and this is all I want to feel.

But somehow, remarkably, Cardan still has some wits about him.

He relinquishes his hold on my thighs, bringing his hands to frame my face as he pulls back. Forcibly keeping our mouths apart.

“My most exquisite tormentor,” he calls me, his voice rough, and I can’t miss how his chest still heaves. He tightens his reddening mouth into a thin, frustrated line with a heavy sigh.

“The doctor said we must not until the bleed is resolved,” he reminds me.

I let out an aggravated groan, dropping my head against his shoulder. Tormentor is right.

I dismount his lap and flop onto my back on the pillow next to him. Cross my arms over my swelling stomach. It’s popped enough that there’s now a little shelf my arms can rest atop.

“I _hate_ being pregnant,” I complain, glaring at the TV. My face is still flushing, and now Netflix is showing us artists painting elaborate scenes all over nearly naked bodies. _Great. More beautiful people I can’t have sex with._

“Try not to take it personally,” Cardan tells The Bump, giving my belly a fond little pat. “She hated me once, too.”

I am beginning to feel as if I always have and will always be pregnant. My entire way of life has been turned on its head, and I don’t know how long it will be this way. I mean, obviously, eventually, the plan involves setting everything right again, back the way it was. But how long will that take?

None of us really know.

When we returned from the ultrasound, armed with a diagnosis and terrifying new information, we found Heather and Vivi waiting at the edge of the hospital gurney. The nurse got me comfortable on the bed while Heather and Vivi pulled up chairs and Cardan sat next to me.

Then, with the curtains drawn, we waited for the doctor and told them everything we’d learned. The hematoma. The twins. What it meant. And most importantly, what we could now not do: travel by ragwort horse back to Faerie.

“I’ll give you my gyno’s information,” Heather offered to me, promptly. “She’s awesome. She’s at Planned Parenthood, so she can work with the fact that you don’t have insurance. You won’t need to, like, glamour her every time.”

“That sounds ideal,” I agreed, feeling the first breath of relief.

“Ok, I really hate to be the one to say this,” Vivi said, and turned her attention to Cardan, “but you just have to go back without Jude.”

“I think I don’t,” Cardan replied, with a stubborn frown. “The Roach is following us here, as security detail. I can send a missive back with him.”

“And then what?” Vivi pressed. “You can’t govern Faerie remotely via The Roach. I don’t care how competent he is. Someone has to preside over the courts and the Living Council. In the flesh.”

“I know,” I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. Of course she was right. I’d known this all along.

“I am not leaving my _pregnant wife_ alone in the mortal realm for who-knows how long,” Cardan insisted, looking more angry by the second.

“You don’t happen to have a new seneschal or anything, do you?” Vivi asked him. Cardan shook his head.

“I have Jude,” he said.

“Aww,” Heather sighed, fondly, looking back and forth between us. “Goals.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Vivi shot her an annoyed glance.

“A seneschal wouldn’t hold enough power anyway,” I interrupted. The wheels are turning. “Everything a seneschal does is at the behest of the High King. Ideally, if this were to work, what we need is a regent. A person who would govern with the full authority of the crown, but only for a temporary, defined window of time.”

Vivi let out a long, overwhelmed breath, sitting back in her seat.

“It would have to be someone you trust implicitly,” she said, gravely. “Someone you know would always carry out your wishes and wouldn’t seek to retain the power longer than you’d want them to.”

I looked at Cardan. He looked at me. Cocked his head to the side. We were having the same idea.

Slowly, we turned to look at Vivi.

And her eyebrows shot up to her hairline.

“Someone who is _not_ me,” she added, in a hurry.

“Vivienne--” Cardan started to say, and I could sense he was ready to bargain and bargain recklessly.

“It _has_ to be you,” I interrupted. “There is no one I would trust more with something like this.”

“Well, sorry,” Vivi shrugged, folding her arms over herself. “I won’t. I don’t want to leave you like this either. I’m not doing it. I would _hate_ it.”

“And that is why it _must_ be you,” Cardan insisted, while I nodded in furious agreement. “You were raised among the Gentry, and yet you still don’t want to seize power. You’ll be eager to give it back. There is no one else capable that we could trust to do so.”

“I can’t govern Faerie!” Vivi exclaimed, flabbergasted. “I’ll ruin it!”

“That’s not as easy as it sounds,” Cardan said. “Trust me – I tried once.”

“But I _hate_ the Folk,” Vivi insisted.

“So do I!” Cardan and I cried in unison. It was like one joyous, hate-fueled reunion.

“As it turns out,” Cardan went on, “you don’t have to particularly like all the Folk in order to work to make the place in which they live somewhat peaceable and livable.”

But Vivi was still grimacing.

“I _like_ my life here,” she was saying. “I have a job and a great place and a girlfriend--”

“—who doesn’t hate the idea of a magical getaway, if she’s being honest,” Heather muttered.

“ _No.”_ Now Vivi was starting to look desperate. “No. We are not doing this. Faerie is especially unsafe for mortals in precarious positions of power. I _cannot_ risk having you glamoured or ensorcelled or God-knows-what-else.”

“I’ll grant Heather a geas,” Cardan exclaimed, persistent to the last. “Like the one Dain gave Jude. More powerful, even. I can make it so that she can never be glamoured or enchanted, ever, by anyone, as long as she lives.”

“You can do that?” Heather looked amazed. I felt a little amazed. Geases are rare and potent magic, a sort of all-your-cards-on-the-table gamble when striking a bargain. And Cardan had just -- _gone_ for it.

“You would do that?” I heard Vivi say, and turned to look at her reaction. My God, the gamble looked to be working. She blinked, wide-eyed and shocked.

“There is no one else we could trust with this, Vivienne,” Cardan said, sincerely. “I shall do whatever you like.”

For a moment, Vivi just stares at him, her cat eyes unblinking.

Then a smile quirked at the edges her mouth.

“You love my sister _a lot_ , don’t you?” she said, like she was having a realization.

“Catastrophically, I’m afraid,” Cardan replied, heaving a sigh. It made me press back a smile.

Looking back to Vivi, I could see I wasn’t the only one.

“I’m very happy to have been wrong about you, Cardan Greenbriar,” she said, and looked between the two of us again. And Heather poked her in the arm.

“Let’s just do it,” Heather whispered to her, with a kind of impish gleam in her brown eyes. “It’ll be an adventure, and it would be a nice break from your dad. You can make me your seneschal.” Vivi gave her an exasperated sidelong look as Heather added with a little grin, even softer: “ _Goals._ ”

And Vivi scrunched up her brow like she was about to put a lot of muscle into tearing something.

“All right,” she said, and squished her eyes shut when I seized her hand in gratitude. “All right. If Heather is granted the geas. I’ll do this. _Temporarily._ ”

“Yes, temporarily,” I promised, squeezing her hand. “That’s the entire point. Oh, God, Vivi, thank you. _Thank you._ ”

“Feels a little early for thank yous,” Vivi said, her wary brow still crinkled, but she squeezed my hand back. “You can thank me if we get through this without a civil war erupting or the faerie economy tanking.”

Cardan was opening his mouth, undoubtedly preparing to say something snarky, when the doctor – a short, stocky man with a tight military haircut and a white lab coat -- finally showed. He carried a clipboard in his hand, from which he produced several pregnancy support pamphlets for me, explaining that I needed to get in touch with an OB-Gyn as soon as possible. I made promises to make an appointment with one the following day.

And, before departing, he handed us several more print-outs. My stomach did a funny little leap – a feeling I used to fear until I understood the truth of it. I was holding snapshots of the ultrasound, and I was falling in love.

Cardan leaned over my shoulder to get another look as I ran my fingers along the smooth surface of the grainy, black-and-white scan. Our two beautiful, blobby children. _Worth handing over the whole of Faerie for._

With our discharge instructions, all four of us finally shuffled out, pausing to linger beneath an overhang just outside the glass vestibule of the emergency room. The rain had not stopped or even slowed, and night had settled over the coast – a starless, pitch-black sky full of rain clouds and change.

“We have to figure out the logistics of this,” Vivi said, which was what we were all thinking while we huddled with our hands in our pockets, trying to keep dry.

“They can stay at our place,” said Heather, ever the free-spirited artist. “And I can work from anywhere, so--”

“Yeah, there’s no Internet access in Faerie, babe.” Vivi was already sounding resentful.

“Ok, so, we come back once a week.” Heather wasn’t flustered – I’m not sure she ever was. “I can be in touch with my clients then, and we can bring Jude and Cardan up to speed on all the Faerie things.”

“You’re actually really looking forward to this,” Vivi realized, looking either concerned or awed by her girlfriend. Heather just gave a cool, casual shrug.

“Yeah. Definitely.” She said it like it was obvious. Like who wouldn’t be?

I was going to cling to Heather’s optimism, I decided right then and there. We had left Faerie in peaceable times. Surely this wouldn’t last more than a week or two – what damage could befall Faerie in such a short time? This could just be an excursion. A holiday. A very weird, bedridden holiday.

And that is how we ended up here – spending most of our days half-dressed in front of the TV in Vivi and Heather’s room. Cardan had returned for Faerie only briefly with Vivienne that first night to sign a proclamation declaring her regency until our return, in the view of the Living Council to assure he was of sound mind and health when he did so. They’d returned before dawn the next day to collect Heather and leave Cardan, who’d brought Tatterfell in tow.

“She seems to think that we shall both starve without some assistance,” Cardan had explained, when my most treasured imp came scuttling into the apartment ahead of him. I didn’t need an explanation, though. I was overcome at the sight of a friendly face and promptly burst into tears when Tatterfell seized my hands – alarming the pair of them considerably.

Once I’d gathered myself enough to explain I was only hormonal and tired, we began to settle into a routine. Tatterfell scolded me harshly for hiding the pregnancy from her and set to making batches of hearty stews in the kitchen, grumbling to herself about Vivi’s lack of decent cookware. And I dozed on the sofa with my head in Cardan’s lap, his fingers carding through my hair.

Then the days began to line up this way. I took Heather’s recommendation and met with her doctor, a short Black woman named Dr. Green who wore bright blue glasses and Converse sneakers and laughed boisterously at Cardan’s jokes. There wasn’t any laughter, though, when she’d explained the seriousness of my plan of care.

“I’m going to need to see you in here once a week,” she told us both as I sat on her exam table. She raised her eyebrows high over the rims of her blue glasses when she spoke. “We’re going to do weekly scans to keep track of the hematoma and your babies’ development; we’re going draw labs to monitor your hormone levels. You need to be eating lots and lots of healthy, nourishing foods – and take your vitamins. Stay hydrated. And I need you to rest as much as you can, particularly your pelvis. I want you taking one thirty-minute walk a day and that’s it, ok? No heavy lifting, no strenuous exercise--”

“No knife-throwing,” Cardan added, bumping my arm with his. Dr. Green gave a fluttery laugh, looking at Cardan sidelong as if she couldn’t tell if he was serious. I chose to leave it at that and pinched Cardan’s arm, which made him grin wickedly.

“And no intercourse,” Dr. Green concluded, and at that, the wicked grin fell. She shot him an apologetic look, closing up the manila folder in her hands. “Just until the bleed has resolved, all right? That area doesn’t need any potential exacerbation while it’s healing. A couple of weeks, tops.” She quirked an eyebrow at Cardan. “Think you can handle that, Romeo?”

I think I blushed red all the way down my neck.

I didn’t expect that to be a particularly big ask, but there’s now literally nothing to do outside of doctor’s appointments beyond watch Netflix, eat Tatterfell’s stews, and not fuck my husband. I can’t train, I can’t scheme – I just incubate and grow bigger by the day.

Only five more moons to go.

_Five entire cycles of the moon._

This. Is. Torture.

I drum my fingers against my folded arms absentmindedly while Cardan makes a concerted effort to keep his focus on the TV on the other side of the bedroom. He keeps one hand in his hair while he works to even out his breathing. It isn’t fair to either of us that this is the new trick my hormones have chosen to play on me, and I’m feeling badly about that.

But also just, like… _absurdly,_ mind-numbingly horny.

Mercifully, Vivi’s phone buzzes on the nightstand next to me – a welcome distraction. She left it with me with some very specific instructions: no answering her calls, no online shopping – and one very important task.

“ _Only_ respond to Madoc’s texts,” she had informed me, as she handed the phone over. “Keep it short and vague. Pretend you’re me. Don’t answer his phone calls. He should not know you’re both here like this, and he’ll just invite himself over if I go too long without responding to him. So, just…” Her brows pinched together. “Keep him appeased and ignorant.”

It’s Madoc calling now.

_Shit._

I’d been doing as I was told – I’d been answering all of his texts with vague, one-word responses. Now it looks like it hadn’t been good enough. It’s escalating to phone calls.

I hit Decline. And gnaw on the inside of my lip.

Madoc’s a source of conflict – in me and in my marriage. There’s the obvious bad blood, stemming from Madoc’s attempts to incite civil war in Faerie and overthrow Cardan, what had gotten him exiled in the first place. We don’t communicate for that reason alone, if we can help it. But it isn’t only that. It’s also the cesspool of complicated childhood memories and feelings in me that I prefer to ignore altogether. As long as our worlds are kept separate, there is no need to parse out whether I hate or love him.

The phone is vibrating again. Madoc is calling _again._

“Fuck me,” I groan. This is not good.

“Jude, _please_.” Cardan’s whine makes it sound like I’ve broken him. “We _just_ reviewed this--” When I look up, he’s pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes.

“No, no, not literally. Sorry.” I hold up the phone so he can see. I can’t keep my brow from furrowing as he drops his hands from his eyes. Cardan’s expression is steeling and hardening when he sees who’s calling. He nurses grudges the way some people coddle pets – with relish.

“Don’t answer,” he says.

“I’m not going to,” I reply, looking back at the phone as it vibrates. There’s an option to text him to respond. I’ll try that.

I write: _At work. Can talk later. –V_

There. That should buy us some time.

The phone buzzes.

**Madoc (DO NOT ANSWER!): On a Saturday?**

“Fuck!” I startle Cardan. “It’s Saturday?”

Cardan just shrugs. All we know how to do here is get an Uber to take us to Dr. Green’s office when the reminder on Vivi’s phone tells us to.

The phone buzzes again.

**Madoc (DO NOT ANSWER!): Taryn passed along some news from your sister. I find it strange you would not have informed me when you knew.**

My guts are now a mess, icing over and doing all sorts of Olympic-sized flips. This – _this right here_ – is why I haven’t wanted to tell Taryn. She can’t help herself. She tells Madoc _everything_ , despite what he’s done, despite what he is. My heart is in my throat. Not just because he knows, and Taryn knows – and is undoubtedly angry with me (I would be angry with me), but also because Madoc is _clearly toying with me._

There is so much unsaid in between those two sentences, and my mind is racing to discern it all. I just know he knows it’s me texting him and not Vivi – I don’t know how he knows, but he knows. Or he at least suspects. I don’t know how I know, but I _just know_.

And I don’t know what he’s going to do with this.

But I do know what he does when he feels betrayed.

I don’t know where it’s coming from, but I’m hit with the urge to flee – right now, pants be damned. I’m trying to steady my breathing, trying to think through what to do next…

“What is it?” Something truly terrifying must be happening to my face, because when I look up at Cardan, he looks pale. Maybe it’s a mirror of what’s going on across my features. I don’t know how to explain this to him – this gut reaction, this innate sense I have of Madoc’s intentions and his games. It’s a thing only those raised by him can know.

I’m still trying to find my voice again when there’s a knock at the front door, reverberating through the apartment, and, at the sound, I’m suddenly three feet tall and quivering. _Oh, my God_ , is all I can think. _Oh, my God_. Vivi said he would do it if I wasn’t responsive enough…

_Is this how my mother felt?_

And _that_ is the thought that leaves me stricken.

For a moment, I can’t move, listening to the patter of Tatterfell’s feet towards the apartment door. In my mind, I’m watching the _pit-pat_ of my mother’s stocking feet against carpet, her unsuspecting tread toward our front door. I’m playing dolls with Taryn, and I have no idea what is coming for me.

“Tatterfell, _don’t._ ”

I don’t know how I found my voice. The flurry in my mind settled on the visions of the blurry, blobby ultrasound scans, the two tiny babies nestled in my belly, and, for them, I knew I must do what my mother did not: _Keep. The Door. Locked._

I leapt from the bed, still only in underwear and the orange t-shirt, and march to the front door, ignoring how Vivi’s phone shakes in my hand. This is crazy – I’d long since stopped shaking in Madoc’s presence. Particularly since his banishment. I’d _won,_ for Christ’s sake. I had the crown and the throne and the kingdom, and he had exactly what his treachery had earned him – nothing. Well, almost nothing. He still had Oriana and Oak and the means to con his way into a luxury condominium on the beach – and the same old, inexplicable hold over Taryn, apparently. And an inability to take a hint from Vivienne. 

But he couldn’t hurt me, and he couldn’t hurt my children. Could he?

 _He’s done it before._ The scars in my side from where he’d once stabbed me sometimes itch as my belly expands. And my mind’s eye is red with the blood of my mother – the blood that _he_ spilled.

And he’s still knocking on the front door in front of me.

I slam the chain lock in place before peering through the peephole at him. Sure enough, there he is, all green and glowering with his protruding bottom teeth, his towering height taking up almost my entire fish-eye vision through the hole. He still wears the same clothes he wore in Faerie, probably because they actually fit his massive build and because he can glamour himself to look normal among humans. Today, he’s in one of his scarlet coats trimmed in gold. He looks like he’s going into battle.

And he’s heard me lock the door. The phone in my hand buzzes, which makes me huff an angry, rattled breath.

**Madoc (DO NOT ANSWER!): It is very rude to lock out your father.**

“Jude?” Cardan put on pants at least before following me out of the bedroom. The lashing of his tail betrays how anxious I’m making him. I shush him fiercely, for some reason. I don’t know – I’m not thinking straight. I just need Madoc to _go away._

So, I do what I do best – I do what I’ve been strictly told not to do. Leaning my back against the door, I bring up Madoc’s contact information and call him.

My hand strays to The Bump absentmindedly as the phone rings just twice. I can hear him answer on the other side of the door and in my ear.

“Madoc,” I tersely greet him into the phone, and Tatterfell’s black eyes go wide when I do. She and Cardan are in front of me together, looking frozen.

There’s a long pause on the other end. Madoc’s tone when he responds sounds like vindication. He feels pleased with himself to have been right.

“Jude,” he replies. “You have been avoiding me.”

_Yeah, no shit._

“That is what exile _is_ , Madoc.” I’m seething, which is a refreshing change from being paralyzed in fear.

“Is it?” Madoc sounds like he’s attempting to tease. It’s not any less foreboding. “I am sworn to never again reenter your realm, but you are here in my realm now, Jude. And with joyous news, as I understand it. Do you not wish for your family to rejoice with you?”

“Appearing at my front door unscheduled, without warning, is hardly a way to rejoice,” I snap.

“How else am I to reach you when you refuse to respond to my attempts to contact you?” Madoc asks, and I pinch at the bridge of my nose. Why can’t he just _take the hint?_ We are at peace without him.

“If I promise to speak with you after this, will you leave now?” I bargain. I don’t know if it’s the right call, but I need my heart to stop racing and the only way to achieve that is if he leaves as soon as possible.

“You are known for lying, Jude--” Madoc starts, and that’s when Cardan seems to have gotten fed up. He strides to my side, leaning in to speak through the door.

“I must insist that you leave at once, general,” he says. “The queen has been demanding robust love-making, and we are not fit to receive an audience at present.”

 _Oh. My. God._ The words have barely left his mouth, and my jaw is on the floor _._ I need to the earth to open up and swallow me immediately.

The look on Tatterfell’s face says it all – her eternal scowl deepens so much, her face might break beneath the weight of her grimace. She knows, as I’m sure Madoc is realizing, that there must be some measure of truth to what Cardan is saying or he wouldn’t be able to say it at all.

Madoc may not actually be about to murder me, but I am going to die of humiliation anyway.

Cardan, on the other hand, is practically gleeful. He presses an eye to the peephole to enjoy Madoc’s reaction, grinning wickedly to himself. I have half a mind to open this door and shove him into Madoc’s ruthless arms just to make myself feel better.

But it works. Of course it works.

After a long moment, Madoc clears his throat. He is, like any reasonable person, clearly uncomfortable, and I feel a little twinge of empathy at that.

“I will call you, Madoc,” I say into the phone. “We will speak again soon.”

“Erm, right.” Madoc sounds like he’s squirming, which, ok, that is kind of a nice feeling. I’ll give Cardan that. “We will speak again soon.”

And, with that, he hangs up the phone, and I hear his thunderous footsteps begin to stomp away.

That’s when the rush of adrenaline leaves me, and the phone slips from my hand. I’m clasping at the roundness of my belly, closing my eyes and suddenly wishing there was a way to hold my babies both even closer than this. I remind myself, remind them, that we’re all alright, we’re all okay, and I can hold it all together like I always have.

And I do, right up until Cardan’s fingers brush my cheek. His soft lips press a quiet, concerned kiss to my hair. It’s as if I’m carved hollow by memory and repressed dread. All I can do is sag against him then and let him hold me.

***

“How did I not know the extent of this?” Cardan asks, softly.

An hour later, and I’m still sitting on the floor in front of the locked front door, wrapped up in Cardan’s arms. My head rests just under his chin as he threads his fingers through my hair slowly. It’s absolutely lovely, and it’s slowly washing out the ghosts of the past out of the air around me. I have no energy or cause to move.

Tatterfell’s clanking around the apartment kitchen to the left of us, assembling something that I know I’m meant to eat soon. Maybe she’ll let me eat it here on the floor.

“It’s not something I have a want or a cause to talk about,” I tell Cardan. I’ve finally told him everything – and I mean everything. He’s known for a long while that Madoc had murdered my mother and father, that I had been a child when I’d witnessed it happen. He didn’t know the finer points – I didn’t want to think about them, ever.

Now my own brain has left me no choice. Cardan was so confused about my reaction to Madoc’s intrusion that now I’ve had to spill every last detail. The knock at the front door. My mother turning to flee.

The blood everywhere – dripping from Madoc’s sword, spilling across the rug, spraying onto the walls. So much blood.

_Why did she run? Why did she run away from us?_

I’m trying to shove the images somewhere far, far away, but they’re not as compliant as they usually are. Cardan tightens his arms around me as I bury my head a little further against him.

“I think the immediate solution is obvious,” Cardan says, his cheek pressed to the top of my head.

“Maybe to you, you massive loon,” I grumble. I’m still not over him putting the image of us having sex into my foster father’s brain. I can’t even make eye contact with Tatterfell yet.

“We ought to show up at _his_ door unannounced with a sword,” Cardan says, which is definitely not what I was expecting.

“I am not _murdering_ Madoc,” I emphasize, incredulous. “I’m pretty sure that counts as strenuous exercise.”

“I never said anything about murdering,” Cardan counters. “Just that we ought to be intrusive and annoying and, if a sword is involved, it will feel very nice.”

I’m about to object, but…swords do feel very nice when you’re feeling helpless.

“I left Nightfell in Elfhame,” I mumble, because it’s been depressing as hell without my trusty sword.

“Easily remedied,” Cardan replies, confidently. I pull back then to get a good look at his face, to gauge just how serious he is about retrieving my sword from the palace for the sole purpose of pestering a sworn enemy. I’m not sure what I expected – Cardan has always taken pestering very seriously. This time is no different. There’s a dark and crooked smile playing on his beautiful lips, and, in this moment, I love it so very, very much. Everything about what he’s suggesting is classic fae mischief, only this time, I get to be on the inside, plotting the havoc.

“I said I would call him, though,” I object, dumbly.

“And you’re a notorious liar,” Cardan shrugs, as if to say, _Who cares?_

We really should not be becoming parents. Internally, I’m telling our babies to shut their eyes and cover their ears so they can’t witness the very dumb things Mommy and Daddy are about to do.

Because all I am thinking is that I would really like my sword back. And I would really like Madoc to know how this all feels.

So, maybe it’s because we had nothing better to do. Maybe it’s because I’m tired of feeling like a weak and useless incubator. Maybe this is sort of an acceptable way to communicate with your estranged foster father/murderer of your mother/your own attempted murderer and traitor to your husband. Or maybe Cardan and I are just predisposed to stupidity if we’re not allowed to have sex. Whatever the reason, that is how we ended up finally fully dressing ourselves the following night and glamouring Nightfell so our Uber driver wouldn’t call the cops on our way to Madoc’s beach condo.

Cardan had made a speedy journey back over the sea to Elfhame during the day and returned with Nightfell. I’d found a stretchy, emerald-toned jersey-knit dress in Heather’s wardrobe with an empire waist that accommodated The Bump nicely, and threw one of her cool denim jackets over it since the nights were getting cool. I asked Tatterfell to braid my hair, which helped smooth over the weirdness after Cardan’s remarks to Madoc – having my hair returned to its two braided knobs seemed to restore her preferred image of me.

The sea air smells salty as we both step out of the Uber in the parking lot of Madoc’s condo building. It’s a classic coastal-looking building where he now lives with Oriana and Oak, when Oak isn’t visiting Vivi. The beach is just over a sea wall at the end of the asphalt; I can hear the waves rolling and crashing against it. My anxious stomach is doing similar pitching and sloshing.

I’ve thought all night and all day about what I want to say to Madoc, what I wish he would know about how wildly, violently inappropriate he has acted. I’ve come up with absolute _zilch._ I have no idea what I’m doing – only that it feels exactly right to be the one with the sword doing the knocking.

That is all I really want to do. I want to him to hear the knock. I want him to see the sword. I want him to wonder what thoughts he made my mother think in her final moments.

Cardan, too, has grown dark and hardened since the incident at the front door. When we stride up Madoc’s front walk, I notice he falls in step next to me, his black gaze steely, his jaw muscles ticking. He’s stuffed his fists into the deep pockets of the hunter green hoodie he’s wearing over slim black jeans. I should have taken the time to probe into what this was stirring up for him, I’m only now realizing. But I’m too far deep in my own vendetta to stop now.

I wonder what Madoc was thinking when he did this to my mother’s front door. Did he come intending to kill? Had there ever been a way through that fateful day that didn’t include death? A long litany of old regrets is resurfacing on the long walk to the door, unbidden, unwelcome…

_If I had been older… if I had been stronger… if I’d known what I knew now…_

Madoc’s front door is ruby red and trimmed with an autumnal wreath Oriana must have picked out. Nightfell is strapped to my back, the hilt gleaming over my shoulder. My shoulders are squared, my breathing unusually shallow – I’m not proud of how my wimpy thirty-minute walks are becoming more difficult with the weight in my belly, but I’m ignoring that for now.

When I pound on the door, it’s with the side of my tightly-clenched fist and my teeth gritted.

The deadbolt rattles as it unlocks. The hinges creak.

“Oh, hey, Jude.”

Here’s where I falter.

Oak is smiling casually up at me, one hand still on the knob and the other cradling his Nintendo Switch. He looks surprised but delighted.

Oak is thirteen and barely a head shorter than me these days, with a mop of charming bronze curls around his growing horns and an impish little grin very reminiscent of his half-brother’s. It’s a little disconcerting. It’s especially disarming in the face of the brooding wrath I’ve been nursing for the last twenty-four hours.

“Hey, Oak.” The forced cheeriness in my voice sounds like it’s coming from someone else, someone sane.

“Mom, Dad, Jude’s here,” he shouts as his attention drifts back to his Switch, adding: “With Cardan – I mean, the king. The king’s here.” And he turns to start to pad away in his comfy grey sweats and his droopy, mismatched socks, leaving the door open for us to step into their foyer.

Cardan moves to follow, but I snatch his elbow, holding him back. I have not figured out what the hell I’m doing, and we are not going in there until I do.

Because I am not going to fight in front of Oak.

_I am better than this._

“Jude?” Something in me is settling back into its place as Madoc appears from a lighted doorway down the hall, with Oriana trailing behind him. “Your Highnesses,” he corrects himself, begrudgingly. “This is unexpected.”

“Oh, Jude,” Oriana breathes, her eyes wide and uncharacteristically loving at the sight of my rounded belly. “Oh, you are radiant,” she whispers, pressing a milk-white hand to her chest.

But I’m uninterested in Oriana’s sudden attention. I’m taking Madoc in, in all his gargantuan, green glory, parading around his mortal exile in the sad vestiges of his former grandeur.

He is not a demon. He’s pathetic.

_I am better than this, and I am better than you._

And I am not afraid of him. More importantly, I’m not angry.

_I am radiant._

A smile is beginning to curl on my lips, and, from the looks of it, it’s making Madoc increasingly uncomfortable. And I don’t care.

I lift my chin. All I have to say to him is really quite simple – I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it until now.

“This is your only warning,” I say to him, my voice steady, my head crystal clear. “You will never darken any of my doorsteps without my expressed permission again. Is that understood?”

Madoc’s eyes gleam as he levels a daring glare at me.

“Or what?” he presses. “Are you going to come to reap your revenge at my front door, Jude? With that sword I gifted you? With the skills I gave you?”

So, he _is_ thinking about swords at his front door. I smile again, wider this time.

“No,” I say, vaguely aware of how Oak cocks his head behind Madoc, his confused glances flitting between us. “No, I am not you. But I will continue to take away every privilege you find yourself enjoying if you continue to insert yourself where you are not invited. The rest of your eternal existence will be lonely and pathetic unless you find it within yourself to exercise some basic respect. I won’t ask again.”

Madoc huffs a sneer.

“You’ve grown weak as this boy’s wife,” he mutters, not quiet enough.

“If you would prefer to be killed, I am certain we can make the appropriate arrangements,” Cardan glowers, but I put a hand to his chest. We’re leaving soon.

“Think what you like,” I tell Madoc, with a shrug. “Your opinions mean nothing to me. There is no reason to kill you anymore, Madoc, because that is how little you matter now.”

And this, for a redcap, is a fate worse than death. Madoc’s sneer is falling.

I have only one last thing to say.

“Make yourself a bit more endearing, however, and that could change,” I turn toward Cardan, preparing to leave, adding: “The choice is yours.”

I half-expect Madoc to try to get in the last word after us as we turn and head back to the Uber waiting at the end of his front walk. But nothing follows us. The ruby red door closes. The deadbolt clicks into place.

I can’t tell if I’ve finished something or started a whole new problem. But there is a quiet, blank space where the storm in my heart used to churn. I am not ashamed of what I did. I would like to believe I’ve done something for my children that my mother ought to have done for me, if she had had the chance.

When we climb into the backseat of the car, I rest my head against the window, my eyes falling shut. I want my mind to put to rest these bloodied memories and go dark for awhile. My nerves are still buzzing. My stomach is starting to growl. Evening has come to the coast of Maine, and the moon is full and yellow over the changing leaves that blur past the car. Cardan reaches for my hand, and for awhile, we ride in silence, his thumb running back and forth over my scarred knuckles. There is nothing – and everything – to be said, so we’re still in the in between.

Until –

“Wait, _stop_.” I sit straight up as I call to the Uber driver. There’s a big neon sign out the window that I recognize, and I just _know_ this could turn the night around.

“What is it?” Cardan looks intrigued as I point out the window at a little hole-in-the-wall Chinese place called Lee’s and Mt. Fuji.

“We’re eating here,” I insist. “Vivi and I would get take out from here _all the time_ when I was in exile. They have these things called crab rangoons--” All it takes is one memory of them, and I’m now determined to eat a dozen. I’m absolutely ravenous.

“You want to revisit a place from your exile?” Cardan winces, looking skeptical.

I rub at The Bump so he understands.

“The babies _need_ crab rangoons,” I say. “Immediately.”

“Then crab rangoons they shall have,” Cardan relinquishes, a hand on the car door. But I’m already out into the street.

I pay the Uber driver like how Vivi showed me, and we head inside. Lee’s and Mt. Fuji is wedged in a line of shops along the downtown strip with a bubbly fish tank full of colorful fish right in the front door. There are paper placemats decorated with symbols and descriptions of the Chinese zodiac in front of us when the host seats us in a corner booth. Cardan sits across from me, messing with the paper wrapper on his straw, while I order enough crab rangoons to feed an entire revel.

I can’t read his face as we settle back in our seats after the waiter head back to the kitchen. To be honest, I haven’t been able to read his face for most of the day. I haven’t been paying attention.

“You’ve been unusually quiet,” I finally mention to him.

He’s biting the inside of his cheek as he looks out the window next to him.

“I was looking for villainy today,” he says, ruefully. “I pushed you towards it, I think. And instead you were heroic and dashing, and I…” He sighs, heavily, looking towards me as he shifts in his seat. “Is this _shame_ I’m feeling? I don’t care for it at all.”

“Don’t feel shameful,” I beg. “You were supportive and lovely.”

But Cardan looks unconvinced.

“I was little villainous,” he maintains. “I would not have minded seeing him bleed.”

I don’t think I would have either.

“A little villainy has never bothered you before,” I say. He sighs again.

“But Oak was there.” His long fingers twist at the straw wrapper a little harder. “And our children were there. And I don’t…” He hesitates, looking down at the straw. “I don’t ever want our children to find me villainous.”

“Cardan.” I’m trying not to smile. I’m always trying not to smile around him. “Are you having an identity crisis?” 

“Don’t laugh.” He chucks a bit of straw wrapper across the table at me. “This is very disturbing. I’m having very disturbing feelings. They’re all… _heroic_ and _shiny_ and _good._ ” And he grimaces like the words taste bitter and then grins at me when I laugh.

“Crab rangoons will fix it,” I promise. “Crab rangoons will fix all the bad feelings.”

_Like how I have never felt further from my twin than I do today._

“I was very proud of you today,” Cardan says. Another little wad of straw wrapper bounces off my forehead.

“Then stop throwing wrapper at me, you goon.”

The crab rangoons appear in record time, and soon I’m showing Cardan how to dunk them in duck sauce and not drip cream cheese everywhere when he bites into them. I’m on my third rangoon when something new happens.

Something _flutters_.

“Oh, my God!” I almost leap out of my seat, jostling the table and dropping a huge glob of duck sauce down my borrowed dress. I don’t care. I’ll care later. Something is _wiggling_ in me.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” Cardan is petrified – wide-eyed with his cheek full of crab.

“It moved! They moved!” Everything awful about the last twenty-four hours is forgotten. “I felt them move!” I’m pressing my hands to my stomach, waiting for it to happen again.

“They like crab rangoons!” Cardan is elated. His grin matches mine as he shoves the plate toward me. “See if you can make them do it again!”

I tuck into another one as he moves around the table to scoot in next to me. He throws an arm over my shoulder, pulling us close. Rests a hand over The Bump and looks down at me with expectant eyes

I think I’m going to burst when I look up at him, there next to me, hoping to know our children.

We are _nothing_ like what raised us.

The silver bell over the restaurant door jingles as we’re cuddled there, waiting for another flutter. At first, I pay it no mind. But then –

“Jude?”

When I look up from The Bump, Oak is beside our table.

“Oak.” My voice sounds more like my own when I greet him this time. Something’s off. His eyes look red, like he’s been crying; his cheeks ruddy like he’s been running. He has a black Nike track jacket on over his sweats, his hands buried in its pockets.

“How—how are you here?” I’m so confused. How did he know where to find us?

“Vivi’s phone,” he says with a sniff. He _has_ been crying. “She lets me see where it is from mine.” He pulls out his iPhone from his pocket.

“What’s going on?” I ask, and then, “Sit down, sit down.”

He slides into the booth where Cardan had been seated a moment ago. Wipes at his nose with his sleeve.

“I know what Madoc did,” he says. “What he did to your mom and dad.”

Oh. _Oh._

We’ve kept the murder of my parents from him for good reason. He’s good and kind and sensitive, and he needed, _deserved_ a happy, normal childhood, away from the knowledge of what his foster father was capable of.

I stretch a hand across the table to him.

“He would never hurt you, Oak,” I promise him. I don’t know – it might be a lie. “You or your mom.”

“But he’s a _murderer_.” Oak looks vehement like I’ve never seen him before. His bottom lip is trembling while he tries to keep his jaw steady. “And a kidnapper. I can’t believe what he did to you, Jude--”

“Well, as you know, life in Faerie is very different--” I try to explain, hoping to smooth this over. I am gutted by the look on his sweet face.

“Murder is murder, Jude,” Oak snaps, and his eyes look wet again. “And kidnapping is kidnapping. It’s bad everywhere.”

“Oak--” Cardan starts, which is a little unnerving, since he’s intimately aware of my own murders.

But Oak cuts him off.

“I’m not going back,” he says. “I am not going to live with him, Jude. I can’t. Please, Jude, please can I come stay with you? Vivi would let me.”

And what were we to do? I didn’t like the idea of hauling him back to Madoc’s right after I’d made such a scene. I glance at Cardan, who pushes the plate of crab rangoons toward Oak.

An invitation.

“Of course you can stay with us,” Cardan tells his brother, gently. Oak gives him a priceless, appreciative smile, tired but toothy. And then helps himself to a rangoon.

Something else flutters in my stomach, but I don’t think it’s a baby. _This will be fine,_ I tell myself. _This will be good._

After all, it’s just Oak. What could go wrong?


	5. The Fifth (or The High King of Elfhame Is Rubbish At Practicing)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How The High King Of Elfhame Came To Start Therapy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After reading How the High King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories, I felt like this needed a Cardan-centric chapter (or two - I've got another one in mind). Hope you enjoy. :)
> 
> Many thanks to [@addies-invisible-life](https://addies-invisible-life.tumblr.com) for beta-ing this chapter! And my apologies for accidentally calling Oak Cardan's half brother in the last chapter. That was made in error. Oak is Cardan's nephew. :)

_Two or three times in my life I discovered love._

_Each time it seemed to solve everything._

_Each time it solved a great many things_

_but not everything._

_\-- Mary Oliver_

“Are you hiding in here?” Jude whispers from the other side of the striped shower curtain.

Cardan scrubs a wet hand over his face. He wants to say no, but -- curse his fey disposition -- he cannot.

“Yes,” he says, miserably.

“What’s going on?” Even Jude’s shadow on the other side of the shower curtain is lovely – full and rounded as beautiful things should be. “Talk to me,” she says.

But Cardan leans his forehead against the cold tile of the shower stall, letting the water run down his back. He’s been standing here for the better part of an hour, and that still has not been enough to wash off how horrible he’s feeling.

Oak needs to go.

It isn’t that Cardan does not care for his nephew, and he certainly holds no small measure of pity for what it is like to fear those who raised you.

But there is something irrational and fiery that burns in his guts whenever Oak lazes around the couch for days and only grunts responses up from his infernal video game console like some ill-trained beast. Combine that with Oak’s science fair project that they’d all spent the better part of the weekend royally mucking up, and Cardan’s nerves are fairly buzzing.

There is something very…Balekin-esque about that feeling, and that is so unsettling. Cardan needs to be rid of it. Immediately.

(He also sort of wants to laze around for days and respond in grunts. He wants to be a little bit feral, too.)

“I will be right as rain just as soon as I can,” he tries to assure his wife. Jude doesn’t need any additional stress. “Don’t you worry about me,” he says.

He wants her to go back to bed, to rest, to get better as soon as possible, and that will fix it all, won’t it? When that happens, they can return to Elfhame, and…and…

_Become parents._

_Become a father._

_Have not one but two lazy spawn to grunt at him for the rest of eternity._

_Live forever with this ghost of Balekin in his guts._

Cardan rubs at his sleep-deprived eyes, his lashes soaked and sticking together. From the prolonged silence on the other side of the shower, he thinks at first that Jude has taken his words to heart and returned to bed. He doesn’t know whether he is glad or sad for it.

But then the curtain rings rake against the shower curtain rod, and Jude’s warm arms wrap around him from behind. Then there’s the press of her full breasts, her rounded stomach, stretched taut, fitted against his back. And Cardan sighs, lacing his fingers through hers, as the water washes over them both.

Jude presses soft, slow kisses along the scars on his back.

“Is this your idea of talking? I think I like it better,” Cardan tells her, feeling her smile against his skin.

“It’s certainly more discreet,” Jude whispers, and one of her hands begins to trail down over his navel, lower. He has to catch the indecent sound that nearly escapes his throat. Their current situation has meant getting a little creative, which he thinks he might love more than air, more than strong drink – _but_ …

Oak is (maybe) asleep on the living room sofa just on the other side of the bathroom door, and although Cardan’s never been one to feel prudish, it makes him feel uneasy. Distracted. Oak in general, it seems, makes him feel uneasy right now.

So, he brings her hand up to his lips, their fingers still entwined, and kisses the scar at its center. The one his own brother had convinced her to inflict on herself. What a pair they both are, so marked by his own terrible siblings.

 _What made you think our family deserved to be larger…_

Why is it always Balekin’s voice Cardan hears when he’s feeling particularly self-loathing?

“Let’s just take some comfort that palace school never hosts science fairs,” Jude whispers to him, breaking his thoughts enough to make him smile a little. “We never have to do this again.”

He turns in the shower then to face her, to wrap her into his arms and press her bare, wet skin against his as best he can – the twins make it a bit more challenging. But he doesn’t mind a bit. He finds he likes Jude round.

It’s a relief to see her heart-shaped face smiling up at him, especially after having spent the day cursing violently over what was meant to be a paper mache volcano. (Absolute madness – _crafting_ like he was some common peasant. He and Oak have magic! They should have been cheating at science fairs like any half-decent fae! Where had Oak picked up this irritating sense of right and wrong?)

(That’s sort of the crux of it, though, isn’t it? Oak is admirable, and he is not, but he is the one becoming a father.)

Jude brushes wet fingers to the edges of his lips.

“So serious today,” she murmurs, and, for her, he tries to smile. He really doesn’t want her worrying.

“Just tell me you love me,” he requests, softly. That will help.

Jude lifts to her toes, and he holds the small of her back a little tighter as she kisses him, sweet and slow. He bends into it then, pushing her back so that her feet are flat again – her center of balance is comically terrifying these days and tip-toes in the shower sounds like a recipe for disaster.

“I love you,” Jude whispers against his lips, and at the sound, a pleasant surge of desire rushes through him. He kisses her harder -- she has to drawn in a breath. Her skin, so soft and warm, is slick beneath his fingers while the water trails over them both. He is so lucky, he thinks, not for the first time, so _very, very lucky_ …

Then soon he’s not thinking at all. There’s only the all-encompassing taste of Jude’s lips, the silk of her skin, and that _heat_ as she lifts her arms over his shoulders, crosses her wrists behind his neck. She lets him push her against the shower wall, arching into him as he traces her curves, gently at first. Then with a growing sense of urgency. He’s breathless – all of his blood is rushing south. It’s been _so long_ \--

But then the bathroom door rattles and bangs. And suddenly Jude is rigid in his arms, slapping a hand over his mouth.

It’s Oak. _Godsforsaken Oak._ He is tromping to the toilet. The seat lid thumps as he lifts it. Cardan can hear the weird blipping and pinging from that gaming device he always carries, and he has never before considered murdering one of his own blood, but, _Queen Mab’s tits_ , there is a first time for everything.

Jude is breathing hard in his arms, her brown eyes wide in abject horror. Neither of them dares to move – because _what do they do?! Who does this?!_

“Hey, Oak?” Jude calls out, after a moment. She’s trying to keep her voice light, but Cardan can’t for the life of him understand why she even wants to draw attention to what’s going on. “Can you not come in here when someone’s in the shower, bud?”

“Sorry – you’ve been in here for, like, forever,” Oak complains. He’s clicking away at his game. Cardan thinks about cutting off his fingers.

“Just pregnant – there’s a lot to wash,” says Jude, throwing Cardan a desperate shrug as she settles on the lie. Whatever – she can say what she wants. He’s not going to even breathe.

Cardan, like most fey, has never been one to care what people thought of how and where he fulfilled his desires, but here he finds that there actually are lines he doesn’t want crossed. Chief among them is having to discuss erections with Oak – which is where this whole situation is headed if he’s not absolutely silent and stone-still.

“Should you be playing that game?” Jude asks next, and _why_ are they even still talking? “It’s late – you have school in the morning.”

“I’m going back to bed,” Oak promises. “There were just a few upgrades available.”

Whatever the hell that means.

It takes practically an eternity, waiting like statues beneath the shower, while Oak blips and clicks away, and then eventually – flushes the toilet.

“ _Oak!”_ Jude shouts, incensed, because almost immediately, the water from the showerhead is ice-cold. Cardan nearly bites her hand to keep from screaming, and he shoves the two of them as far away from the stream of water as he can.

“Sorry!” Oak apologizes. “Forgot!”

Then, mercifully, the bathroom slams shut.

“ _Ugh_ , he didn’t wash his hands,” Jude gripes, as if that’s somehow the most pressing issue of the moment and not the freezing water being dumped over the both of them.

Cardan reaches back into the icy shower, wincing and grimacing, and turns off the water. Then, without a word, they eagerly spill out of the shower stall, shivering and fumbling for towels.

“He _has_ to go,” Cardan complains, muffled as he stuffs his face into a fluffy white towel.

“ _You_ were the one who said he could stay in the first place!” Jude hisses, and that’s almost too much. Cardan glares up over the towel at her. She’s wrapped in one of her own, over her head like a lewd-looking little nun with bare legs, as she shivers and tries to warm herself.

“He’s more your family than he is mine!” Cardan shoots back in a seething whisper, but Jude just rolls her eyes.

“Check your math on that, idiot,” she sneers through chattering teeth.

This problem clearly isn’t going to be solved here, in furious whispers so Oak can’t hear. Neither of them is making any sense anyway. All Cardan can do is stifle a frustrated groan back into the towel as Jude moves to the sink to aggressively brush her teeth.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Cardan knows he has a tendency toward fantasies and illusions of grandeur, as neglected princes so often are, but he really thought all those romance novels were at least not making _this_ part up – the happily ever after part, where the duke caresses his lover’s pregnant belly while gazing at the setting sun. Their future before them, bright and wonderful; their broken pasts dead and buried.

He pulls on a pair of sweats, low on his hips so his tail can be free for the night. He has to wear pants all the time now that Oak is here. Oak’s ruining everything.

 _Is it Oak, though?_ He catches his reflection in the mirror over the sink before shutting off the light. He’s sporting tired circles under his eyes – how utterly horrifying. It makes him look…owl-like.

_Balekin-like._

He slams the light switch off.

Jude sleeps with about a dozen pillows now, each one propping up a different part of her body – knees, ankles, breasts, that incredible belly. She can fall asleep at the snap of fingers, which she appears to have done tonight, even though mere minutes ago she was angry-brushing her teeth. There’s not a whole lot of room for Cardan, but it’s enough.

He curls on his side next to her after crawling under the covers. She is so lovely, always has been, but perhaps more so like this. What had he been angry about again?

With gentle fingertips, he pushes back wisps of auburn hair from her forehead, traces the soft curve of her freckled cheek. She makes a light, dozy sound in her throat at his touch, not quite asleep, not entirely awake. It pulls at his heart -- that scarred muscle she’s made so soft and pliable over the years. It reminds him for a moment that, no matter where they’re headed, it is better than where he’d been.

It is always better with her.

He presses his palm softly against the curve of her belly then, with all the tentativeness of knocking on a stranger’s door. It frightens him a little, what he feels for the sight of Jude bearing his children – an overwhelming mixture of fear and love. The love he expected, but the fear… it’s hard to unravel it. He doesn’t know who’s in there. He doesn’t know if he can be enough for who is.

But he wants to be. He hopes he can.

He falls asleep with his hand there, hoping he might feel one squirm. Hoping that it might spark something in him stronger than his fear.

***

“Everyone up!” Since Oak’s arrival, Tatterfell’s voice echoes through the little apartment every weekday morning before sunrise. This morning, it’s accompanied by the sizzle of bacon in a pan. The imp is always eager to ensure the twins are getting enough to eat.

“The little one will be late for school!” Tatterfell shouts.

“Off with her head,” Cardan groans with his face in his pillow. Before he opens his eyes, he instinctively reaches out to pull Jude into his arms, but this morning, he finds the space already empty – his palm brushes warm sheets.

When he throws on a t-shirt and stumbles out into the kitchen, he finds Oak and Jude already at the breakfast table, tucking into Honey Nut Cheerios and Tatterfell’s omelets. The mess of a paper mache volcano sits as a pitiful, lumpy centerpiece between them.

“Am I the one you’re shouting for?” Cardan’s still rubbing his bleary eyes as he blinks out at Tatterfell, who’s bustling about by the stove.

“Oak’s going to need some help getting the volcano to school,” Jude explains. Oak has been riding his scooter to the middle school each day.

Cardan plops into the seat next to her.

“Use Vivienne’s device to hail one of those carriages,” he tells Jude. He knows that’s not the word he’s looking for – he’s too tired to remember what they’re called.

“Yeah…Vivi doesn’t _love_ how often I’m using her Uber account,” Jude replies, in a tone that indicates that their regent actually hates it immensely. “Can you just help him carry it in? It’s not heavy – just big.”

Well, he’s up anyway. Cardan reaches for Oak’s cereal.

“Why did you make it so big, Oak?” he sighs.

“That’s what she said,” Oak says, sloppy around a mouthful of Cheerios, elbows on the table. Jude kicks him under the table as Tatterfell swats the back of his head, but Cardan snorts. He’s not heard that one before. Oak gives him a cheeky grin. Sometimes the little bugger is pretty great.

“Where are you learning such manners?” Tatterfell chides Oak, crossing her arms. Oak just rolls his eyes, and Cardan pours himself some breakfast, trying to ignore how his skin prickling. Balekin would have beaten him raw for that.

Out of the corner of his eye, Cardan’s aware of how Jude is inspecting him closely – she’s wearing that scheming little frown.

“You should stay for Oak’s science fair,” she tells him, a moment later. “He could use some moral support.”

“It’s fine,” Oak brushes it off, and Cardan almost starts to agree – he is so over fussing over this lumpy volcano.

But when he looks to Oak, he sees something in his eyes painfully familiar. Oak wants Cardan to like him so very much.

_Why is that so terrifying?_

“I’ll stay,” he tells Oak anyway.

“You don’t have to, seriously,” but Oak’s turning a little red with delight. “It’s going to be super boring.”

“I highly doubt it will be more boring than watching your sister eat all day,” says Cardan, and Jude’s silverware clatters as she drops it.

“You made me this way!” she exclaims, pointing at her swollen belly. He grins widely at her. Yes. Yes, he did, indeed.

“Ahh la la la!” Oak is grimacing with hands over his ears. “I don’t wanna hear it!”

Cardan adds this to his growing list of ways to get under Oak’s skin. That always alleviates his discomfort.

Everyone dresses for the day after breakfast as Tatterfell washes the plates in the sink. Every morning here is like getting ready for mortal role play. It’s endlessly fascinating. Last week, at their meeting with their regents, Heather told Cardan he was dressing like something she called a “stoner.” He still doesn’t know what this means, but he does notice that sometimes older mortals look at him sideways, like they’re not sure about him – and that is very satisfying. He also likes that it made Jude laugh.

Cardan favors a pair of grey joggers today – it’s more comfortable for hiding his tail, and Jude’s been wearing a lot of stretchy pants, so it only seems fair he gets to as well. He adds a dark green hoodie, sneakers, and the beanie he uses to cover his pointed ears.

Jude’s put on a tank top and one of Heather’s button-downs, unbuttoned and open around her pregnant belly, when Cardan looks up at her while tying his sneakers.

“If you’re plotting something, I would prefer to be in the know,” he tells her.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jude says, lifting her eyebrows as she rolls up the sleeves. That face makes him uneasy.

“Of course you don’t.” But he narrows his eyes at her as he stands. “Is my constant presence becoming a bother to you?” She _had_ become so frustrated with the volcano-assembly that she’d thrown a bottle of glue at the wall. It is very possible she wants them both out of her sight.

When Jude sighs and crosses her arms, he thinks he’s hit the nail on the head. But instead she says:

“You’ve been acting weird since Oak showed up.”

“How have I been--?” He thought he’d been better at hiding it.

“And it’s hard to watch because he really likes you.” Jude’s uninterested in his feigned ignorance. “I think a little bonding time wouldn’t hurt our situation. Break the ice or whatever you need to do, because _I miss you._ ” And she presses a hand to his chest like she’s beseeching, which breaks him a little. “I really need you right now,” she adds, softly, and presses her other hand to the swelling curve of her belly. If he wasn’t broken before, now he is.

“I am right here,” he tries to reassure her with a hand over hers at his heart.

But her brow is furrowed and he knows what she means, and if he had even half her courage, he could tell her now about how often he’s thought of Balekin and been filled with dread since Oak landed in their lives – if he wasn’t so afraid of worrying her. And of trying to be a husband and a father when he’s never seen it done before.

There is no room for error anymore.

Here in the mortal world, he is stripped of all the usual vices he likes to indulge if he needs a distraction from how terrified he is. There are no revels, and there is no dancing. There is no faerie wine. And that is paralyzing him.

So, he trusts Jude’s schemes once more – and takes Oak to school.

***

“Oh, my _god._ ” Oak groans into his palms. “I’ve seen three other volcanoes _already._ ”

“There is a chance ours is superior,” Cardan offers, but only because he hasn’t seen the third. Oak’s volcano is stooped and rounded – more like an unwieldy volcanic anthill than a towering mountain. But of course he’s going to do all he can to avoid telling Oak this.

“They grade you on originality, too, though!” Oak isn’t consoled. He scowls across the sea of grey tables and cardboard trifolds in the middle school gymnasium at a girl with – Cardan hates to admit it – a much more polished volcano. Their situation is pretty hopeless.

“I should have known,” Oak whines, and slumps back against their table. “Every time there’s a science fair on TV, mortal kids take volcanoes. I should have known that was a thing.”

“Would it alter the outcome of the grading if the other volcanoes were met with an unfortunate end after falling into a surprise sinkhole?” Cardan asks, raising one black eyebrow.

“ _Do not_ open up a sinkhole under my school gym.” Oak turns his glare up on his uncle. He may not be a blood relative of Jude’s, but he’s certainly practiced and honed his glare under her.

“I am shocked that you think I would do such a thing,” Cardan sniffs. Oak rolls his eyes.

“You people think magic tricks are the answer to everything,” he complains. “I miss Heather. She’d have had a better science fair idea.”

This takes all the air out of Cardan’s gut. He set his jaw and shoves his hands deeper into his hoodie pockets, his fingers tightening.

 _You people are fake and ridiculous_ , he’d shouted at Balekin once. He can’t remember now what had even sparked the row, but he couldn’t have been much older than Oak when he’d said it. Balekin’s black eyes darkened in response, his mouth thinning into a cruel line.

Cardan would come to know this look too well. It was a harbinger of pain and tears, of being forced to his knees while a glamoured mortal servant struck stripes across his back with a switch.

 _Is this real enough for you?_ Balekin had sneered over him when he had finally cried out, a wet cheek pressed against the rug. _Or should I leave you to the night and its wolves?_

 _I am all that stands between you and ruin_ , he told Cardan before leaving him alone with his blood.

The middle school gymnasium smells like rubber and old shoes when Cardan draws in a quick breath – it’s a welcome reminder that he’s far, far away from the land of his memories.

“I,” he tells Oak, trying to pretend his head isn’t swimming, “am going to locate one of those contraptions filled with all the food.”

“A vending machine?” Oak smirks, with a smug look that sort of makes Cardan want to stuff _him_ inside this so-called vending machine.

But his wife has asked him to bond _or whatever._

“Would you also like food from the vending machine, Oak?” Cardan asks, even though the nice gesture in this moment causes him actual, physical pain.

“Doritos?” Oak asks, hopefully, suddenly looking cheered. “Thanks, Uncle Cardan.”

Only once Cardan steps into the school hallway do his fists start to loosen inside his pockets.

There are three different kinds of Doritos in the vending machine, which is its own kind of maddening. Cardan finds himself staring at them each for far too long. (He also can’t make heads or tails of how to pay for them. Oak may gripe about magic, but if he wants a snack, he’s going to have to get over himself.)

But, as he stands and assesses his predicament, the hairs along the back of his neck begin to prickle.

There is a creeping sensation along his spine, and, with it, the unshakeable suspicion that _someone is watching him._

Cardan holds his breath – holds very still. Trains his fey ears to the sounds around him. Something – _someone­_ is near. And doesn’t wish to be detected. His mind is a blur of a half dozen names he’s heard over the years, all solitary fey -- rogue faeries and goblins and trolls who left Elfhame in favor of the havoc they could wreak in the mortal realm. Any one of them could stand to gain a lot from getting their hands on a ruler of Faerie.

He suddenly feels very idiotic for coming to Oak’s school, alone, without a weapon, without a plan, without _Jude --_

“Hey, are you Oak’s dad?”

The air rushes out of him in a gust. Cardan turns to the guy who’s addressing him, who is decidedly not fey, and tries to let go of the strange feeling lurking under his collar. _It’s nothing – it’s an overreaction – it’s over-wrought nerves._

This new fellow’s tall, lanky, and though he looks young, he sports a few grey hairs throughout his dark, close-cropped hair. He wears dark-rimmed glasses and blue button down shirt along with a 1,000-watt smile that Cardan finds a little startling in this tense moment. Cardan smiles at the newcomer, nervously.

“Ah, no,” he says. Does he seriously look old enough to be Oak’s _father?_ He knows he’s been sleep-deprived lately, but _yikes._ “No, no, no…”

“I’m sorry.” The man puts a hand up, apologetically. “I’ve only met Oak’s mom at conferences, so I was intrigued – I’m Mr. Hernandez, Oak’s science teacher.” And with that, he holds out his hand.

It takes Cardan a minute to realize Oak’s teacher is attempting to engage in one of those mortal greeting rituals – the firm handshake. He gives it a try, hoping it’s convincing.

“I’m Oak’s uncle,” Cardan explains, which is a simplistic explanation but true enough.

“That makes a lot more sense,” Mr. Hernandez laughs. “You seemed super young to be a middle schooler’s dad.”

“That is a _relief,_ ” Cardan breathes out, shoulders sagging, to which the teacher laughs some more. Mr. Hernandez seems to be the type to laugh at just about everything.

“Yeah, sorry again,” he says, though his mile-wide smile looks unashamed. “My wife and I started having kids young, so when I think I spot another young dad, I get a little weird. That’s what my wife tells me. _And_ my kids. And my students, come to think of it. I’m gonna let you get back to your snack selection.”

But there’s something magnetic about this mortal and his unshakeable cheerfulness, and Cardan would rather he not leave just yet. In fact, he sort of wishes he could plug into him like Vivienne’s phone charger and suck up whatever it is that’s making him so lively despite being around droves of small humans.

“You weren’t entirely wrong,” Cardan hears himself say, before Mr. Hernandez can leave. “My wife is with child.”

“Ah-ha.” Mr. Hernandez grins like he’s made an important scientific discovery. “You _are_ giving off dad vibes. Congrats, man. Is it a boy or a girl or do you know yet?”

This is the first time this announcement has been met with something other than fright or worry or doctor’s visits, and it’s like a balloon has suddenly swollen up in Cardan’s chest. Perhaps this is what it was supposed to feel like all along.

“It is _twins_ ,” Cardan emphasizes, enjoying how the word makes Mr. Hernandez’s eyes bug out behind his glasses. “We’ve had many scans – there have been some complications. But they have always been too shy to give up the goods,” which is how Dr. Green puts it every week. _We’ll get you next time_ , she’ll say to the babies, before swiveling her ultrasound wand away.

“That sounds _intense,_ ” says Mr. Hernandez, and it does, doesn’t it? Hearing someone else say it is a breath of fresh air. “And these are your firsts?” he asks.

Cardan gives a slow, weighted nod, releasing a long breath. Is this mortal wielding magic – why does he feel so emotional right here in front of this vending contraption?

“Man.” Mr. Hernandez clicks his tongue, sympathetically. “Our first was a textbook normal pregnancy, and that was still the most intense time in my life. I can’t imagine what you’re dealing with.”

“I’m not the one expanding to terrifying and implausible new widths,” Cardan says with a cavalier shrug. It is Jude everyone should worry for. It is Jude _he_ worries for.

Mr. Hernandez laughs again. It’s doing wonders for Cardan’s ego.

“That is true,” says Mr. Hernandez. “The ladies did seem to draw the evolutionary short stick that round. I don’t envy them that. But the new dad stuff’s no joke, either – I’m sure you’re realizing.”

Cardan _has_ realized – what he hasn’t realized was that he wasn’t the only one. He almost seizes Oak’s science teacher. He wants to shout _Tell me._ _Tell me how you survived it,_ but –

“Mr. Hernandez?” There’s a student at the other end of the hall calling for the impossibly happy science teacher. He is needed back in the gymnasium.

“I’ve got to get back,” Mr. Hernandez tells Cardan, with a jovial pat on the back that suggests a farewell. “Good luck to you, Oak’s uncle.” He extends his hand for another one of those mortal greetings. Cardan shakes it more firmly this time, like maybe some of this fellow’s parental wisdom can rub off on him that way.

“Cardan,” he tells the man. If only it could buy him more time.

“Congrats, Cardan – you’re gonna do great,” Mr. Hernandez says before leaving him to the vending machine.

If Mr. Hernandez notices Cardan’s overwhelming skepticism at this claim – _You’re gonna do great --_ , he’s kind enough not to point it out or attempt to fix it. He does, however, pause a moment on his way back to the gym.

“You know what was a real lifesaver with our first,” he calls back, “were these parenting classes the hospital offers for first-time parents. You should check it out – they used to offer one just for dads. They might still.”

“Really?” Cardan didn’t know such a thing existed. Mortals never cease to amaze.

“Swear to God, it saved my sanity,” Mr. Hernandez promises. “Definitely worth looking into.”

“I shall,” Cardan replies in earnest.

When he returns to Oak and his volcano, Cardan, feeling a little lighter, a little brighter, has magicked all three types of Doritos out of the vending machine. The smile on Oak’s face is wider than it’s been in weeks.

***

That night, Cardan lies in bed next to his sleeping wife, staring at the ceiling. He can’t get to sleep – again. His mind is a mess. Tonight, it’s showing him repeats of a similar night not so long ago in Elfhame, a night before Jude was pregnant, and he can’t seem to get it to stop.

 _“I don’t understand,” Jude said next to him in their bed, staring at the ceiling, too. She’d donned an absolutely sinful nightdress he’d never seen before – a pale sky blue in color, lacy and diaphanous. She hadn’t been coy about its purpose. It was meant to tempt him – and tempted he was. It left little and much to the imagination all at once. It should have been easy to undo its laces, to unwrap her and indulge in everything she wanted him to take._

_If only he wasn’t so panicked about what the giving actually meant this time. That this wasn’t practice anymore – Jude wanted to make a baby, his baby, right here, right now. As perfect as she looked, he couldn’t get it out of his head._

_And he was having trouble – ahem -- rising to the occasion._

_“I thought you wanted this,” Jude said. “You said you wanted this.”_

_“I know.” Cardan pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I do.”_

_“So, then, what is it? Is it me?” And she looked hurt when he looked to her, and he was gutted._

_“Never,” he swore. “Never ever. This is entirely my own failing, Jude, I swear it.” He wanted to positively die of humiliation._

_“You are not ‘failing’.” Jude said the word like it was a curse. “I just want to understand. For weeks, you’ve been so gung-ho about this, and now that you’ve finally got me, I’m on board, this happens. I just don’t get it--”_

_The pressure then was so enormous, Cardan thought he might be crushed to bits beneath its weight. And there were only ever two ways he knew to cope with such discomfort._

_“Of course you don’t get it,” he snapped with an icy glare. “It has only ever been easy for you to think of family and imagine it as a gift. How could you possibly understand what this asks of me?”_

_He regretted it the moment the words left his mouth. They hung in the air like a toxic fog, like echoes of a horrible curse that was supposed to be broken. Jude craned her neck to level an indignant, open-mouthed glare back at him. Then sat up in bed and roughly reached for her dressing gown._

_“You don’t have to be a dick about it,” she huffed, hastily shoving herself out of the bed._

_“Jude…” Apologies were already rushing to his tongue as he propped himself up on an elbow. What was wrong with him? Why did he do this?_

_“Save it.” Jude waved him off, furiously, and stalked to their chamber doors, hurriedly tying her robe around herself. “I can’t even look at you when you’re like this,” she muttered._

_He wanted to call her back to him – he wanted to race after her. He wanted to be so much better than he was. But old chains of self-loathing kept him locked to the bed, watching his painfully beautiful wife hurry away from him._

_Before she left, Jude paused at the door. Looked back at him over her shoulder. The candlelight in the room flickered in the angry tears pooling in her soft brown eyes._

_“I know it has not been your experience, but family **is** a gift – one I thought you wanted,” she said. “And it has been **my** experience that it is a gift that can be all too easily taken for granted and lost.”_

He’s replaying the moment over and over in bed each night, this night no different. It doesn’t matter that he tried to make it up to her the next night. And the morning after that. And then the next three days – any one of which was surely responsible for their current situation. It doesn’t matter that he’s spent the last five moons trying to undo the curse his cruel tongue nearly wrought. Every night, it still weighs on him – but especially since he’d heard every detail of how Jude had witnessed her mother’s murder. And especially since he began seeing himself in Oak every day.

And perhaps he’s only just now realizing it, perhaps he’s known it all along – getting rid of Oak will solve nothing. Because Oak hasn’t done anything. It is Cardan who is broken. Cardan is the one haunted and cursed.

 _I am all that stands between you and ruin,_ Balekin’s ghost whispers in his ear.

Ruin has never felt so near.

Jude stirs in her sleep next to him and gives an uncomfortable groan. Passersby like to tell her she looks “ready to pop,” not realizing she’s carrying two babies and is only going to get bigger, much bigger. In Cardan’s eyes, she looks ready to stab someone. He rolls over to pull her into his arms, to rub her belly or her legs or whatever it is that’s making her complain. But instead, she pushes herself up onto her hands, her hair comically awry as she cradles her stomach.

“Gotta pee again,” she mutters, unhappily, before waddling off to the bathroom.

It’s hard to not feel partly, if not entirely, responsible. Is that what keeps him up at night, what calls to Balekin’s ghost? The guilt? Or is it the fear? Is it madness? Is he losing his grip on reality?

Perhaps this is why his own father wanted nothing to do with his children. It’s just _too much._ Perhaps survival played as much of a role in his parents’ neglect as their own egos. If that is the case, are those grainy, squirmy, beautiful blobs on their ultrasound scans just as doomed to similar neglect as he had been?

Cardan flops an exhausted arm over his eyes while he waits for Jude to come back. He would pay untold amounts of faerie gold right now to the first person, be they fae or mortal, capable of turning off his brain and granting him some peace.

That’s when he reaches for Vivi’s phone on Jude’s nightstand and stares at it a moment. He wants to look up what Mr. Hernandez had told him about, the classes at the hospital, if only he knew how Jude maneuvered this confounded thing.

When Jude comes back, she finds his face lit up in the bluish glow of the iPhone’s screen as he lies on his back, and she snickers.

“What are you doing?” Jude asks, amused. Cardan holds out the phone to her.

“How do you wield this?” he asks her, which makes her laugh again.

“What are you trying to do?” Jude sits next to him, propped against the headboard, as she punches in some numbers on its screen.

So he tells her then – the whole story, while he stares at the ceiling with his head resting near her side: the teacher at the vending contraption, the relief he’d felt speaking to another father. When he mentions the classes at the hospital, Jude’s expression softens into a tired smile. She combs her fingertips through his messy hair.

“You…want to take parenting classes?” Jude sounds equal parts delighted and skeptical. Cardan feels sheepish and weird and has very little control over the strange smile he’s giving her as a result. At least she doesn’t seem to mind.

“You do understand that this won’t fit into my bed rest orders,” Jude says, while she taps away at the iPhone screen, searching. “You’ll have to do it on your own – does that bother you?”

Not as much as he thought it would.

“So, just so we’re clear,” she says when he tells her as much, “you, Cardan Greenbriar, High King of Elfhame, you want me to enroll you in…” And she turns the phone’s screen to face him so he can see what her searching has revealed. “’ _Daddy Boot Camp’?_ ”

Cardan’s lucky he’s drinking so much less these days – the name alone would have caused him to do a spit take.

“Don’t tell Oak,” is his only request. The last thing he needs right now is to be bullied by a bunch of smelly middle schoolers.

“I can make no such promise,” Jude chuckles, already filling out the registration form.

***

“It’s really important for dads to connect with their babies early on in life,” a balding man in a navy blue polo shirt explains to the room of wide-eyed, would-be fathers. “The research all shows us that dads that are connected with their babies at three months old, and are dedicated to maintaining that connection, are the same dads that have positive relationships with their children throughout their children’s entire lives.”

They’ve each been given a infant-sized doll and a diaper, and though he knows he should be participating, at this exact moment, Cardan’s getting too much enjoyment out of watching the fellow next to him struggle. Someone ought to tell him the diaper’s on backward – maybe Cardan himself will. Just not quite yet. It’s the singular thing bringing him joy in the midst of this bad idea.

He’s not sure what he expected. After one has had the unfortunate experience of roaming the countryside inside the body of a cursed and bloodthirsty serpent, one generally finds oneself less concerned with the anxieties that go along with anticipating new experiences. There’s very little that the mortal world has to offer Cardan imagines could rattle him.

That is, until “Daddy Boot Camp.”

Although this “Daddy Boot Camp” had all the nominal possibilities of being a test of brute strength and cunning, this arrangement has more of an absurd study session vibe, complete with slideshows and worksheets and demonstrations – just a veritable smorgasbord of ways Cardan can be incompetent. It’s being held in a sunny meeting room at the Down East Community Hospital, with soothing, cream-colored walls and beanbag chairs arranged in a circle. Currently, everyone’s practicing their diapering skills on the floor – something Cardan’s only recently learned must be done on a pad or a soft blanket for both the baby’s comfort and its very soft head, a fact he’s sure to forget seconds after leaving this building since there is _so much information_ to digest.

(Although he’s quite sure he’s not been worrying nearly enough about baby heads, and now the idea that he could accidentally, _literally_ dent one is absolutely going to gnaw at him for months.) (Here he’s been wasting all this time stressing about Jude and Oak and their regents and the remnants of Balekin, and nowhere near enough time on the terrifying prospect of dented baby heads.) (Or colic.) (Or diaper rashes.) (Or spit up – _spit up!_ Why has no one warned him about how often babies are known to vomit?!) (And don’t even get him started on baby poop.)

(This is why it is so much nicer to just sit back and watch a grown man with a nametag labeled “Jared” struggle to diaper a doll backward.)

Cardan has not completed the full day of boot camp, but he is certain of this right now: this is not going to preserve his sanity, as Mr. Hernandez promised. This might actually be the thing that breaks him. He has been teasing Jude for months about letting cats raise their children, but for this brief moment, he thinks there might be some merit to the idea. Let the cats handle the poop.

And then the balding facilitator in the polo shirt notices he’s not diapering.

“Cardan, buddy,” he says. Cardan is not a fan of how often Maine mortals use this word. “You can do this, man. It’ll be like second nature in a few months.”

“It’s not possible to do this worse than me,” Jared encourages with a self-deprecating grin, and holds up his half-diapered doll. Everyone laughs. That eases some tension in Cardan’s shoulders. He’s unused to this uncompetitve nature he keeps finding among mortals. It’s strange being around a group of men who genuinely just want to see each other succeed.

Strange – and lovely.

So, slowly, tentatively, he practices. He’s rubbish at it, as he’s always been with new things – it’s hard at first to tell what’s the back and what’s the front and how to unfold the sticky parts -- but it’s something.

Then the facilitator opens up the room to a discussion about what’s worrying them about fatherhood.

And Jared says: “I’m worried about the crying and not knowing what to do.”

And Micah says: “I’m worried about dropping it – they seem so fragile.”

And Andrew says: “I just want them to be ok, my wife and the baby.”

And that’s all fine and good – Cardan has worried about those things, too. It helps to hear it discussed, to hear ideas and strategies bounce around, even if it doesn’t encompass the full breadth of his fears.

But then, Chris says: “I just hope I can be as good a father as my dad was. He left big shoes to fill.” And when the room murmurs agreements, Cardan can’t keep his mouth shut.

“But say you didn’t have a father,” he spouts, not lifting his attention from the swaddle practice in which he’s currently engaged. (He’s actually not half bad at it – his practice doll looks quite cozy.) “Or at least, not a particularly fatherly one. Say you’re learning all this from scratch. How does one start from nothing and become a good father?”

When he glances up, all eyes are on him. He’s not said much all day – this is a hell of a note to start on, he’s now realizing.

“Yeah, my folks divorced when I was young,” says Andrew. “I saw my dad on weekends – he wasn’t really into the whole father/son bonding thing.”

“My dad was a truck driver,” says Micah. “I saw him like once a month.”

And he’s not sure why he keeps talking – Cardan’s supposed to be keeping a low profile. It’s like there’s some magic in the air when fathers speak.

“My father wanted nothing to do with me,” he hears himself admit. “And my mother resented how I drove him away. I didn’t really know either of them.”

The room gets quiet.

“Holy shit, dude,” Jared mumbles, horrified. Cardan thinks for a moment he may have said way too much, but --

“What an asshole,” Micah agrees.

“It’s really admirable that you’re acknowledging where your own upbringing was lacking,” the blue polo shirt facilitator says. “You’re changing a pattern here – you’ve got a really lucky kid.”

 _Admirable._ This is a little unbelievable. It takes Cardan’s breath away. This man’s not calling the High King of Elfhame admirable, seeking his favor. He means Cardan Greenbriar, this fellow mortal awaiting fatherhood he’s just met, is admirable. He doesn’t believe a word of it.

“Twins, actually,” he mutters to the swaddling blanket.

“ _Holy shit, dude,”_ Jared emphasizes, louder this time. Everyone’s a-buzz at this latest revelation.

“What are you going to _do_?” Andrew’s slackjawed and helping nothing.

“Surely you have other positive role models to draw on,” the facilitator says. “Any meaningful father figures in your life?”

Now is probably not a good time to talk about his fond memories of growing up curled in a warm pile of house cats. But he’s also unable to lie and make up a story to steer their attentions elsewhere.

“I was mostly raised by my older brother, but he was…unkind,” Cardan treads lightly. _And he’s very dead,_ he doesn’t add. _Very much murdered by my wife and mother of my children._

A fact he _cannot_ , under any circumstances, disclose to the nephew who lives with them now because he discovered his own foster father is also a murderer.

He’s just staring at the swaddled doll in front of him, drifting away in the rising torrent of fear and memory, when the facilitator slides something into his hands. It’s a little white card with some typed up information on it.

The card reads: Portland Counseling Associates. Russell Johnson, MA, LCMHC.

“You should come talk to me sometime,” says Russell Johnson, the facilitator, and he gives him a kind smile. “And good fathers are made by doing exactly what you’re doing.”

“Which is?” Cardan wonders, brow furrowing.

“Doing the next right thing,” says Russell. “One step at a time.”

And this is how the High King of Elfhame came to start therapy.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing for this fandom, so bear with me. :)
> 
> For more shenanigans, come visit me on [tumblr](https://anonniemousefics.tumblr.com)!


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